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Dec. 22, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:14:16
The Truth About Impeachment
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid.
Hope you're doing well. So, listen, I've been at this for about 15 years.
I've developed a bit of a thick hide of cynical armor when it comes to the slings and arrows of outrageous politics.
But when it comes to this particular tale of slippery woe, the truth about impeachment, is President Trump guilty?
I find that the arrows of Democrat malfeasance has actually pierced my cynical hide and found a soft spot of, I guess...
Hope for optimism to not be sitting ringside in the slow death and decay of the Republic.
Let's talk about the truth of this impeachment.
Is Trump guilty?
Okay, we'll start with some facts, we'll do some background, and then there'll be, well, just a rant or two at the end.
So, on December 18, 2019, the U.S. Congress voted on articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump.
There were two votes. The first was on abuse of power.
The second was on obstruction of Congress.
Huh. Okay, abuse of power, kind of get that.
Obstruction of Congress.
See, the word you'd be expecting there would be obstruction of justice, which is a crime.
Obstruction of Congress.
I mean, the whole point of the American political system is to have the three parts of government kind of at war with each other.
They were designed so that ambition should undo ambition and they should blunt their powers to expand their powers by constantly butting up against each other.
A whole purpose, in some ways, of both the judiciary and the president is to obstruct the will of Congress.
And, of course, in a three-way vice versa, the same thing occurs.
So obstruction of Congress...
I mean, that's kind of his job in many ways, so we'll get into what that means as we go forward.
So the votes for the charges of abuse of power were 230 in favor, 197 against, and one voted president.
All House Democrats voted in support, with the exceptions of Colin Peterson and Jeff Van Drew, who voted against, and Tulsi Gabbard, who voted present.
I guess that's her integrity, which is to be part of a party who's doing this, but not get behind the wheel.
All House Republicans voted against.
The votes for the charge of obstruction of Congress were 229 in favor, 198 against, and one present.
Every Democrat voted in support except Peterson, Van Drew, and Jared Golden, who voted against, and Gabbard, who once more voted president.
Although former Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash voted in support of both parties.
So, partisan lines.
Partisan lines tells you that this is not something completely outrageous.
This isn't a precedent found in, I guess it's the Russia collusion fantasy, went in a hotel room with either a live hooker or a dead boy.
If there had been genuine high crimes and misdemeanors, it wouldn't be split so along party lines.
This tells you it's a partisan process and repulsive thereby.
On the day of the impeachment vote, a Gallup poll was released reporting that Trump's approval rating increased by six points during the impeachment process while support for impeachment dropped.
And actually it's become, like impeachment is an incredibly serious process.
It's really undoing the result of an election that interrupts the relatively peaceful transfer of power that has characterized the republic.
Lo, these centuries, and it is a massively serious and highly dangerous grenade to be rolling under the tent edge of democracy.
And it's actually been kind of ridiculed.
Like now they're saying how disastrous the new Star Wars film is that J.J. Abrams ought to be impeached from being at the helm of Star Wars movies.
In other words, it's been cheapened, this incredible power that Congress holds to undo an election, particularly midstream, as is the case here, or late in the first term this next year.
Soon coming up is going to be, of course, an election year.
So, it is not being taken particularly seriously, with the exception, of course, that people are looking at what the Democrats are doing to Trump and what they've done repeatedly to Trump supporters over the last couple years and say, well, if they can do that to a rich, famous and powerful president, what happens if I ever get in their sights?
It's a pretty chilling question, right?
So let's do a brief history of what led up to it.
July 31st, 2016.
Wow. In the accelerated, hyper-powdered-nosed Hunter Biden cocaine time switch of the modern electoral cycle.
It doesn't seem that long ago in real terms, but it feels like an age and eternity a couple of generations ago in Internet time.
July 31st, 2016, the FBI opened up an investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion.
This, of course, is long ago.
Before the election, the FBI then spied on four American citizens who were associated with President Trump's campaign.
British ex-spy Christopher Steele created an unverified dossier, and you know it's not really a dossier if they have to keep referring to it as that, which was used by the FBI to get spying warrants from the FISA court.
The FBI repeatedly lied to the FISA court.
Some people have the count up to about 17.
The FBI also withheld some seemingly important information.
The FBI did not inform the FISA court that the author of this dossier was a fanatical anti-Trumper or that he was working for the Clinton campaign or that he had been fired by the FBI for leaking information to the press or that the dossier had not been independently verified or that a news story supposedly corroborating the dossier actually came directly from the dossier.
And in evidence of this supposed crime, they didn't seem to be overly eager to tell the FISA court that the applications relied solely on double or triple hearsay from both unverified and compromised sources, right?
Like if you're gathering intelligence, you're not supposed to pay people because then they'll just give you what you want to hear to get the money.
And some of this salacious allegations were from paid, others were unpaid, unverified, but just a complete mess.
And there's all this weird uppercase, screamy, Fifty Shades of Grey style Language in this supposed dossier.
Here's an example. Trump's perverted conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where he knew President and Mrs.
Obama, whom he hated, had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a golden showers, sick, urination show in front of him.
The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.
You know, it's funny, that's pretty much Jeffrey Epstein's modus operandi, or was, while he was still alive, so...
But yeah, not true, not verified, nothing like that.
So this is what they use to subvert the FISA court process.
And I mean, just imagine being able to use the FBI for opposition research when you're aiming to become president of the United States.
Amazing, terrifying, appalling.
Now, this spying continued after the election.
Then on January the 6th, 2017, then FBI Director James Comey briefs President-elect Trump on the Steele dossier.
Trump was told he was not under investigation, although he was, and the FBI was actually trying to entrap him in that very meeting.
And this is what's hard for people to grasp, especially after this...
Chris Matthews, lick upside the inseam of Barack Obama, praise that was dumped upon him for many, many years.
There is, of course, a sitting U.S. Democrat President Barack Obama worked with senior members of the intelligence and investigatory agencies who also worked with Hillary Clinton to deliver damaging information on her political opponent.
That is astounding.
You, of course, think of this as an immoral use of the power of the FISA court and of the FBI.
But think of all of the crimes that weren't pursued because resources were being poured into this political battle.
It's appalling.
Now, the belief was, of course, spoon fed to them pablum style by the media that Hillary was going to win and that Trump had no chance, 2% chance, 5% chance.
It wasn't going to happen. I predicted it, but, you know, I could just do a victory lap and get tired of these things after a while.
And so because they believe the media projections of an overwhelming Hillary Clinton victory...
The FBI, the intelligence agencies, the investigatory agencies, they took risks.
There's reports that they altered documents, cut corners, and misled.
The court withheld information and direct lied to the court because if Hillary got in, they could say, hey, you know, we were pretty sure you were going to get in, but we thought we'd give you just a couple of extra favors to help you across the finish line.
Of course, they'd never be investigated if Hillary got in, and so they really took a lot of very...
Edgelord, skaty, skaty chances, and then, like, the worst thing happened.
Hillary lost, Trump got in, and then, well, what happens?
When Trump won, they were vulnerable.
Could be exposed. All of this could be exposed, and so they pursued the best defense as a good offense strategy.
So when Trump came in, of course, this is a guy who came in sideways.
Like there's a mirror between Trump coming in from the outside, from the non-approved elites conveyor belt of compliant yes-men to the hidden powers that be.
Trump kind of comes in sideways in the way that Internet pundits and so on are coming in without all of this gatekeeping and this leftist vetting and so on.
So when Trump came in to the office, there were lots of complaints from the deep state, from the senior bureaucrats, from the permanent unelected powers that be that Trump was not following talking points.
They didn't like that Trump had his own ideas and in particular, in particular, they did not like that Trump was actually using the presidential powers he'd been granted by the Constitution, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, that he wasn't starting any new wars, that he was talking about drawing down forces in that he wasn't starting any new wars, that he was talking about drawing down forces in Syria So it's a lot of money rolling around in war.
War is the health of the state.
And the fact that he was not beholden to or controlled by the powers that be made him, well, a bit too democratically elected for their taste, right?
So, the FBI continued their investigation after Trump's inauguration, after 10 months of this Russia collusion conspiracy theory.
Anytime people talk about conspiracy theory, you bring this Russia collusion, Trump-Russia collusion, first and foremost, front and center.
It's the most egregious and destructive conspiracy theory that has existed in modern American times.
May 9th, 2017, Comey is fired.
Bob Mueller is hired shortly after, and America endures two years of the Russia collusion conspiracy.
19 lawyers, 40 agents, 500 warrants, 2,800 subpoenas, resulting in zero collusion.
There's some hinty hints of obstruction of justice, but nothing that could rise to the DOJ pursuing it.
So then what? Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Oh, good. The witch hunt is over.
The conspiracy theory is over.
Nope. Spoiler!
It's not. After that fails, what do you get?
You get impeachment. Now, of course, impeachment has been around since the dawn of the Trump-era impeachment was first voted on.
Actually, back in 2017, it's been a constant fixture and thirst and desire of the Democrats, of the leftists in the media, and so on from the very beginning.
So skipping forward, September 2019, House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
Why? Well, as a result of a whistleblower's accusation that Trump had threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate allegations that Joe Biden's son Hunter benefited financially from the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor.
So this is an important thing to sort of wrap your head around.
And as we're going to be talking about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and corruption, or at least alleged corruption down the road in this presentation, it's really, really important to get this right.
The main allegation is that President Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless Ukraine investigated Hunter Biden, who is Joe Biden's son, for corruption.
corruption, right?
Right.
So the idea behind this is that Trump is leaning and putting pressure on the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter Biden, which will have political splash damage on Joe Biden, who could be the nominee for the Democrats in 2020.
So the idea behind this is that Trump is leaning and putting pressure on the Ukrainians to investigate Hunter Biden, which will have political splash damage on Joe Biden, who could be the nominee for the Democrats in 2020.
And thus, he is subverting the political process.
He is harming the Democrats, which I guess is the same as subverting the political process from their mind.
Now, spoiler, the president of Ukraine, whose name is Zelensky, said that he was not pressured by Trump, that Ukraine didn't even know that the aid was not being released during his conversation with President Trump, and also that Ukraine did absolutely nothing to get the aid released.
It's very, very important to understand this, right?
Hey, Trump, you pressured this guy to investigate.
Hunter Biden, thus damaging Joe Biden's chances in politics, and you threatened to withhold aid, right?
Except the president said he wasn't pressured, wasn't threatened, and that they didn't even know that the aid was not being released, and that Ukraine did absolutely nothing to get the aid released.
So, in a sane universe, that's kind of an open and shut case.
Okay, let's talk about Hunter Biden for just a moment here.
So, Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden.
Yeah. So a drug abuser, addicted to cocaine, and it seems on occasion, a crack.
Once got kicked out of the Navy after testing positive for cocaine.
And here are some, again, sources to all of this stuff will be below.
Here are some quotes. Regarding Hunter Biden once hoping to buy cocaine, he was sold a piece of crack, New Yorker author Adam Antus wrote.
But he wasn't sure how to take the drug.
I didn't have a stem, Hunter said.
I didn't have a pipe. Improvising, he stuffed the crack into a cigarette and smoked it.
It didn't have much of an effect, he said.
Hunter Biden's ex-wife said his spending rarely relates to legitimate family expenses, but focuses on his own travel, at times multiple hotel rooms on the same night, gifts for other women, alcohol, strip clubs, or other personal indulgences.
So Joe Biden's oldest son, Beau Biden, died of brain cancer in 2015, leaving two children and a wife named Hallie Biden.
Two months later, Kathleen...
Hunter Biden's wife asked Hunter Biden to leave.
Hunter had begun dating Hallie, his dead brother's widow.
He stands accused, that is Hunter Biden, of fathering a child with a woman who is now 28.
This may have actually happened while he was in a relationship with the aforementioned dead brother's widow.
In a strip club, Biden allegedly spent thousands of dollars in the VIP room using credit cards that didn't have...
His name on it, or his name on them.
And another report is Hunter Biden is hoping to keep his financial situation under wraps as he responds to legal claims that he's cheated an ex-stripper out of support and health care costs for their baby, a report said.
Hunter Biden spent several thousand dollars at a Manhattan strip club during a pair of visits, including one that sent a staffer scrambling to buy a sex toy so strippers could use it on him.
But I'm the one who gets bad press.
Yeah, this makes sense. And of course, you know, I can't run my own family.
My children are a disaster.
But hey, why don't you put me in charge of your entire country?
Says Joe Biden. I'm sure that's going to work out just beautifully.
So, Joe Biden.
Now, this is a jaw-dropping confession.
And again, I'll link to all of this stuff below.
So he's at the Council for Foreign Relations, 23rd January 2018, and he's talking about his relationship to Ukraine, to Kiev, right?
He says, and I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev, and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee, and I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't.
So they said they had.
They were walking out to a press conference.
I said, nah, I'm not going to, or we're not going to give you the billion dollars.
They said, you have no authority.
You're not the president. The president said, I said, call him!
Laughter. I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars.
I said, you're not getting the billion.
I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.
I looked at them and said, I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.
Well, son of a bitch, you got fired.
And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
Jaw-dropping! Absolutely jaw-dropping that you're really confessing to this kind of Is that a crime?
You gotta fire the prosecutor who's investigating my son or I'm not going to give you the billion dollars.
Oh, you did? Here's your billion dollars.
I mean, are they just going to replace quid pro quo with quid pro joe?
Is that the next plan for Newspeak?
Confessed! On tape!
Right there! Gotta fire this prosecutor.
Now, question.
Just, you know, just by the by.
Is it more interference in a foreign country's affairs to threaten to withhold aid unless a prosecutor investigating your son is fired or to sit down and say, hey, it'd be great if you investigated something.
I'll let you be the judge.
I have massive respect for my audience and you can figure that one out for yourself, I'm sure.
Now, the italics here are...
Documents or texts from a website or a news source, and again, put the links below, interviews with a half dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden's account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day, whatever the case. Potashenko and Ukraine's parliament obliged by ending Shokin's tenure as prosecutor.
Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine and among some U.S. officials for not bringing enough corruption prosecution when he was fired.
But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn't mention to his audience.
The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden's younger son Hunter as a board member.
Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden's and Archer's Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records, placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.
Now Biden, Hunter Biden that is, Kicked out of the Navy for trusting positive for cocaine use.
He's embroiled in a wide variety of paternity suits and affairs with his dead brother's wife.
And he's got staff allegedly running out to buy some sort of gross intestinal fortitude sex toy that gets jammed into some orifice that isn't currently jammed up with Ukrainian cash.
He's got no experience in Ukraine.
I don't think he even speaks the language.
He's got no experience in natural gas, but they put him on the board.
And pay him staggering amounts of cash.
Come on. Come on.
I mean, everybody knows what this is.
I mean, I don't even need to say it. Don't even need to say it, right?
This guy who's investigating Biden's son, Joe Biden's son, demands that he get hit.
Joe Biden demands he get fired.
While insisting that former President Barack Hussein Obama was complicit in Biden's threat against Ukraine.
This has all been reported on.
The New York Times, other people reported on this years ago.
So, best defense is a good offense, right?
Accuse others of what you're guilty of.
Trump is putting undue pressure on Ukraine for nefarious purposes.
Investigate my son? Too bad.
You don't get a billion dollars.
God. It's bad enough it's your own money.
It's unborn taxpayers' money.
Okay. Washington Examiner says, let's put the allegations against the Bidens into perspective.
The son of a sitting vice president, who many consider to be the next president, received $50,000 per month to sit on the board of a foreign company for which he lacked any semblance of proper qualifications and relevant experience.
Hunter Biden, who had never worked in the energy sector, has even admitted, quote, a lot of things in his life happened just because he's a Biden.
Hey man, $50,000 a month?
Crack ain't cheap!
Have a heart. Nevertheless, Hunter's board seat gifted him $600,000 a year.
And for what? It appears to be little more than an insurance policy by a corrupt band of elites to avoid any criminal repercussions.
And it worked. When Ukrainian investigator Viktor Shokin began looking into the blatant example of corruption, then Vice President Biden got him fired.
At one point, Biden withheld $1 billion in Ukrainian aid to pressure the government to remove Shokin from the Prosecutor General's office.
Yes, he withheld foreign aid, which Democrats claim is somehow outside of Trump's legal authority.
The Examiner continues, not only is this blatant corruption, but it involves the Vice President of the United States.
Joe Biden is one of the most recognizable political figures in recent memory, and he leveraged his position on behalf of his son at the expense of a foreign nation's anti-corruption efforts.
Where is the outrage, oh democratic reformers?
If this had been Trump's son, the hashtag resistance's cries of impeachment would certainly ring even louder.
But since it's one of their own, the ever-hypocritical left is circling the wagons.
The truth is this.
Quid pro Joe is certainly worthy of a criminal investigation.
In fact, to investigate an obvious act of corruption, one Biden bragged about until it stopped being in his interest to do so, is the only way to force accountability.
Good for Trump. If he did what has been alleged, Trump is simply exercising his authority to promote America's law enforcement interests in fighting high-level political corruption by the rich, powerful, and well-connected.
So, was Trump doing quid pro quo?
So, let's say that the allegations are true that Trump withheld aid Unless and until Ukraine agreed to resume the investigation into corruption, into this Burisma company which had on its board Hunter Biden at the time.
So let's say it's all true.
Let's say it's all true.
Was Trump wrong to pursue a serious charge of quid pro quo against quid pro Joe?
Again, this is from The Examiner.
Absolutely not. Trump did exactly what he should do if he actually did it.
On legal and constitutional grounds, he has every right to condition or withhold aid, military or otherwise, to a foreign nation in order to force that nation's assistance in a serious investigation of high-level political corruption or any number of other policy goals.
Remember, Trump serves as commander-in-chief, which allows him to dictate U.S. foreign policy as he so chooses.
Indeed, U.S. foreign policy often involved pressuring other countries to advance American interests.
Think sanctions against Iran or tariffs on Chinese goods.
Remember when President Barack Obama put pressure on NATO members to spend more on their defense program or when he pressured then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to resign?
Not only does he, Trump, have the legal authority to force Ukraine's hand, but Trump would also be wise to do so.
In this case, the interest Democrats don't seem to support is accountability.
And here's the thing. Even if, although there's no evidence for, every piece of evidence against it, they've released a transcript of the actual call, declassified, which Schiff had to paraphrase and falsify in order to make his case— There's no evidence that the president of Ukraine felt any pressure, even knew that the aid was being withheld, did nothing to receive the aid.
He said he was not pressured, so there's no evidence for it, every piece of evidence against it that I can see.
But even if it was true that Trump withheld aid in order to encourage Ukraine to pursue a corruption investigation, it's only an investigation.
He didn't say, you got to find Hunter Biden guilty or no aid for you.
He just said, well, we'll see what he said.
We'll see what he said. Sir Peter Schweitzer has said he's highlighted Hunter Biden's lack of professional or experiential bona fides in terms of his board positions at Burisma Holdings.
Quote, suffice to say Hunter Biden has no background in Ukraine.
He has no background in energy policy.
There's really no legitimate explanation as to why he got this deal with this energy company other than the fact his father was responsible for doling out money in Ukraine itself.
And by the by, Ukraine was facing bankruptcy in the absence of this billion dollar.
Schweitzer went on, quote, In the face of mounting and often hysterical criticism that Trump had done something wrong in his call with President Zelensky, he actually performed the significant and in a sane universe exonerating step of Of releasing, declassifying and releasing the transcript.
The Department of Justice has released an unredacted transcript of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The text was taken down by note-takers.
The call took place in July from the White House Situation Room.
It shows no effort by President Trump to pressure Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter in exchange for military aid.
This action was falsely alleged by a whistleblower and pushed Democrats on Capitol Hill into an impeachment inquiry.
And I quote from President Trump.
There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General Barr would be great.
Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.
Any threats, any quid pro quo, anything like that?
Zelensky replied, I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor.
First of all, I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation.
Since we have won the absolute majority in our parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September.
He or she will look into the situation specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue.
The issue of investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty.
So we will take care of that and we'll work on the investigation of the case.
So this is important, right?
So this is Zelensky, president of Ukraine, saying we're going to look into a company, not into Hunter Biden, not into Joe Biden, not into Barack Obama.
They're going to look into this Burisma company.
What does Trump say? Trump says, I'm sure you will figure it out.
I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly, and he was a very fair prosecutor, so good luck with everything.
You have a lot of assets.
It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends.
They're incredible people.
I mean, he lays on the compliments fairly thickly.
That's always been a habit of his, and it's part of his roughneck gold toilet charm, as far as I can tell.
Irony of ironies.
Did you actually know there's a treaty between the U.S. and Ukraine regarding cooperation for prosecuting crimes, including, of course, crimes of corruption?
It was passed when Joe Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate and signed by then-President Bill Clinton, and it automatically renews.
No further legislation is required.
This comprehensive treaty agreement encourages cooperation between the US and Ukraine in the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
President Trump was following this document, arguably to the letter, by focusing on the long-standing corruption in Ukraine allegedly involving powerful Democrats such as Joe Biden and others.
I'll link to the actual treaty.
It's an interesting read. Treaty with Ukraine on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters.
You're supposed to work together to solve crimes.
It was signed into law by Bill Clinton when he was president.
It was passed when Joe Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate.
But now apparently it's terrible for there to be any cooperation in the prosecution of crimes if those crimes could lead to the Democratic frontrunner for presidency.
What do we do? What do we do?
Alright. So, abuse of power.
Complete nonsense as far as I can tell.
I'm no lawyer. Obviously, I'm just looking at this from the outside, but heaven's sakes.
So, let's look at obstruction of Congress, which is not a crime that I could find.
Obstruction of justice? Yes.
Obstruction of Congress? Not really.
Okay. So, what's the story?
Congressional committees do have the power to issue subpoenas for testimony and documents, and presidents are not immune from answering the call.
This is from The Atlantic. Now, if you issue a subpoena, then you have inherently the power to charge people with contempt and to fine or to jail them if they ignore those subpoenas.
And Democrats have decided not to pursue that course to enforce their subpoenas.
And that course was actually last used by Congress in 1934.
And so, for my younger listeners, that's long before even I was born, right?
It doesn't look good if you're threatening people, throwing them in jail, and then they get the martyrdom of going to jail rather than submit to what is arguably a highly unjust and possibly anti-constitutional process that's going on.
We'll get to that in a second here.
But yeah, they do have the power to issue subpoenas and they can find our jail witnesses who ignore them, but that's a lengthy process, right?
You've got to get the court to enforce them and that would take them long past with appeals and all that long past the 2020 election, right?
Now, there's other enforcement options.
Again, you could send this criminal contempt referral to the attorney for the District of Columbia, but that's not going to really, really work because the Justice Department has backed the White House stance on not complying with this impeachment inquiry.
The other, you could use this obscure appropriations provision to force witnesses to turn over their pay for For the duration of the time that they refused to testify, but again, that looks pretty bad, particularly over Christmas, stripping Scrooge-style the meat and tendies from the families of those being called by Congress.
So that's the deal.
Here's a quote. Anybody subpoenaed by Congress is required to comply because that has the force of law.
This is Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
I think it's going to be very hard to rebut.
Now, a president can assert executive privilege to withhold information in the public interest, which usually leads to a separation of powers battles in court.
Now, what's different this time is that the Democrats are not trying to enforce their subpoenas by going to court, where the battle could last for months.
They want a House impeachment and a Senate trial, even one that they lose, wrapped up early in the 2020 election election.
Yeah, right? So what they can say, of course, put my sort of evil hat on, is they could say they haven't, if they win, of course, then, which they won't, because it's a Senate still controlled by the Republicans.
So if they win, they get Trump out of office, and then everybody freaks out because...
Mike Pence moves up, which many would consider even worse than Trump.
But if they lose, they can say, well, it was a partisan process and we should have won, but those nasty Republicans just thwarted the attempt that Congress is making to control a president out of control and to get him to come to heel and respect the Congress.
They just get fundraising like crazy out of it.
So, yeah, it's a pretty cynical move, but...
That's politics, right?
So... The move was an early sign that Democrats intended to move quicker than former special counsel Robert Mueller did in his two-year investigation into Russian interference in 2016 and would not allow the Trump administration to essentially run out the clock by forcing Democrats into court fights that would drag impeachment close to or beyond the 2020 election.
The report devotes dozens of pages to documenting each instance.
This is the report about why the impeachment is going forward.
Documenting each instance in which the administration withheld a requested document or blocked a witness from testifying.
It also delivers on Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff's promise to include, as part of its obstruction case, Trump's attacks verbally and via Twitter on the officials who testified against him, which Schiff had characterized as witness intimidation, which is also a crime, although... How a tweet fits into witness intimidation is certainly beyond my mortal ken, but I'm sure people with greater expertise have commented on all of that.
So why would you stonewall?
Why would you just not comply with congressional subpoenas regarding this process?
I mean, Nixon did not turn over segments of the tape in the infamous secret White House recording system that was under the table, you know, as much under the table as all of the interns giving JFK blowjobs.
So why would you not comply?
Nixon wouldn't turn over the recordings, but he did say to his people, yeah, go ahead and comply with what Congress wants you to do.
So why would you stonewall in this area?
Well, Trump's lawyer in this matter, Cipollone, sent a letter to Congress basically saying why.
And in his letter, he described a number of irregularities in the investigation, slamming Democrats for not allowing the administration to cross-examine witnesses, receive transcripts of testimony, or have access to evidence.
The process used by the Democrats, Cipollone argued, is an overreach of congressional authority.
Ah. Now we're starting to get to the heart of the matter.
Why not? Is Trump not participating in this process and why he's suggesting to people don't participate in this process?
Well, can you imagine? Standing in front of Congress, being cross-examined, not being allowed to cross-examine witnesses, not receiving transcripts of testimony or having access to evidence.
These are foundational legal requirements or standards.
So this goes on.
Echoing political arguments Trump has made on the campaign trail, Cipollone accused the Democrats of seeking, quote, to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the president they have freely chosen.
Which is, of course, hard to argue.
It's not Trump who's being impeached.
It's all of the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump who are being impeached and having their votes overturned because they're inconvenient to the political fortunes and possibly legal freedoms of senior Democrats.
So let's turn to this letter.
Let's have a look at this. Very, very interesting.
Okay, so this is the letter sent October 8th, 2019.
And it says, Dear Madam Speaker and Chairman and so on, he said, I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all passed bipartisan precedent as an impeachment inquiry.
As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.
For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans.
You have conducted your proceedings in secret.
You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening executive branch officials, claiming you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives.
All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past president.
Never before in our history has the House of Representatives, under the control of either political party, taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.
Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the president they have freely chosen.
Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, But as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away.
As one member of Congress explained, he is, quote, concerned that if we don't impeach the president, he will get re-elected.
That, of course, is the interview with Al Green on MSNBC, May 5th, 2019.
Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to our system of free elections, and to the American people.
For his part, President Trump took the unprecedented step of providing the public transparency by declassifying and releasing the record of his call with President Zelensky of Ukraine.
The record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate and that there is no basis for your inquiry.
The fact that there was nothing wrong with the call was also powerfully confirmed by Chairman Schiff's decision to create a false version of the call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.
In addition, information has recently come to light that the whistleblower had contact with Chairman Schiff's office before filing the complaint.
His initial denial of such contact caused the Washington Post to conclude that Chairman Schiff clearly made a statement that was false.
In any event, the American people understand that Chairman Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral, quote, investigator.
For these reasons, President Trump and his administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process.
Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice in order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the executive branch, and all future occupants of the office of the presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry One.
Thank you.
Your quote, sorry, I, your quote, inquiry is constitutionally invalid and violates basic due process rights and the separation of powers.
Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process.
In the history of our nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step.
Here, House leadership claims to have initiated the gravest inter-branch conflict contemplated under our Constitution by means of nothing more than a press conference at which the Speaker of the House simply announced an official impeachment inquiry.
Your contrived process is unprecedented in the history of the nation and lacks the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding.
The committee's inquiry also suffers from a separate fatal defect.
Despite Speaker Pelosi's commitment to, quote, treat the president with fairness, end quote, the committees have not established any procedures affording the president even the most basic protections demanded by due process under the Constitution and by fundamental fairness.
Chairman Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee has expressly acknowledged, at least when the President was a member of his own party, that, quote, the power of impeachment demands a rigorous level of due process, end quote, and that in this context, quote, due process means the right to be informed of the law, of the charges against you, the right to confront the witnesses against you, to call your own witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel.
All of these procedures have been abandoned here.
These due process rights are not a matter of discretion for the committee to dispense with at will.
To the contrary, they are constitutional requirements.
The Supreme Court has recognized that due process protections apply to all congressional investigations.
Indeed, it has been recognized that the due process clause applies to impeachment proceedings.
And precedent for the rights to cross-examine witnesses, call witnesses, and present evidence dates back nearly 150 years yet.
The committees have decided to deny the president these elementary rights and protections that form the basis of the American justice system and are protected by the Constitution.
No citizen, including the president, should be treated this unfairly.
To comply with the Constitution's demands, appropriate procedures would include, at a minimum, the right to see all evidence, to present evidence, to call witnesses, to have counsel present at all hearings, to cross-examine all witnesses, to make objections relating to the examination of witnesses or the admissibility of testimony and evidence, and to respond to evidence and testimony.
Likewise, the committee's must provide for the disclosure of all evidence favorable to the president and all evidence bearing on the credibility of witnesses called to testify in the inquiry.
The committee's current procedures provide none of these basic constitutional rights.
In addition, the House has not provided the committee's ranking members with the authority to issue subpoenas.
The right of the minority to issue subpoenas subject to the same rules as the majority has been the standard bipartisan practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential impeachment inquiries.
The House's failure to provide co-equal subpoena power in this case ensures that any The House's utter disregard for the established procedural safeguards followed in past impeachment inquiries shows that the current proceedings are nothing more than an unconstitutional exercise in political theater.
As if denying the president basic procedural protections were not enough, the committees have also resorted to threats and intimidation against potential executive branch witnesses.
Threats by the committee against executive branch witnesses who assert common and long-standing rights to destroy the integrity of the process and brazenly violate fundamental due process.
In letters to State Department employees, the committees have ominously threatened, without any legal basis and before the committees even issued a subpoena, that, quote, any failure to appear, end quote, in response to a mere letter request for a deposition, quote, shall constitute evidence of obstruction.
Worse. The committees have broadly threatened that if State Department officials attempt to insist upon the right for the department to have an agency lawyer present at depositions to protect legitimate executive branch confidentiality interests, or apparently, if they make any effort to protect those confidentiality interests at all, these officials will have their salaries withheld.
The suggestion that it would somehow be problematic for anyone to raise long-established executive branch confidentiality interests and privileges in response to a request for a deposition is legally unfounded Not surprisingly, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice has made clear on multiple occasions that employees of the executive branch who have been instructed not to appear or not to provide particular testimony before Congress based on privileges or immunities of the executive branch cannot be punished for following such instructions.
Current and former State Department officials are duty-bound to protect the confidentiality interests of the executive branch, and the Office of Legal Counsel has also recognized that it is unconstitutional to exclude agency counsel from participating in congressional depositions.
In addition, any attempt to withhold an official salary for the assertion of such interests would be unprecedented and unconstitutional.
The Committee's assertions on these points amount to nothing more than strong-arm tactics designed to rush proceedings without any regard for due process and the rights of individuals and of the executive branch.
Threats aimed at intimidating individuals who assert these basic rights are attacks on civil liberties that should profoundly concern all Americans.
Aye, aye, the invalid impeachment inquiry plainly seeks to reverse the election of 2016 and to influence the election of 2020.
The effort to impeach President Trump without regard to any evidence of his actions in office is a naked political strategy that began the day he was inaugurated, and perhaps even before.
In fact, your transparent rush to judgment, lack of democratically accountable authorization, and violation of basic rights in the current proceedings make clear the illegitimate partisan purpose of this purported, quote, impeachment inquiry.
The founders, however...
Did not create the extraordinary mechanism of impeachment so it could be used by a political party that feared for its prospects against the sitting president in the next election.
The decision as to who will be elected president in 2020 should rest with the people of the United States exactly where the Constitution places it.
Democrats themselves used to recognize the dire implications of impeachment for the nation.
For example, in the past, Chairman Nadler has explained, quote, The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters.
We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat, and we must not do so...
without an overwhelming consensus of the American people there must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by another such an impeachment will produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions Unfortunately,
the President's political opponents now seem eager to transform impeachment from an extraordinary remedy that should rarely be contemplated into a conventional political weapon to be deployed for partisan gain.
These actions are a far cry from what our founders envisioned when they vested Congress with the important trust of considering impeachment.
Precisely because it nullifies the outcome of the democratic process, impeachment of the president is fought with the risk of deepening divisions in the country and creating long-lasting rifts in the body politic.
Unfortunately, you are now playing out exactly the partisan rush to judgment that the founders so strongly warned against.
The American people deserve much better than this.
3. It is transparent that you have resorted to such unprecedented and unconstitutional procedures because you know that a fair process would expose the lack of any basis for your inquiry.
Your current effort is founded on a completely appropriate call on July 25, 2019, between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine.
Without waiting to see what was actually said on the call, a press conference was held announcing an impeachment inquiry based on falsehoods and misinformation about the call To rebut these falsehoods and to provide transparency to the American people, President Trump secured agreement from the government of Ukraine and took the extraordinary step of declassifying and publicly releasing the record of the call.
That record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate, that the president did nothing wrong, and that there is no basis for an impeachment inquiry.
At a joint press conference shortly after the call's public release, President Zielinski agreed that the call was appropriate.
In addition, the Department of Justice announced that officials there had reviewed the call after a referral for an alleged campaign finance law violation and found no such violation.
Perhaps the best evidence that there was no wrongdoing on the call is the fact that after the actual record of the call was released, Chairman Schiff chose to concoct a false version of the call and to read his made-up transcript to the American people at a public hearing.
This powerfully confirms that there is no issue with the actual call.
Otherwise, why would Chairman Schiff feel the need to make up his own version?
The Chairman's action only further undermines the public's confidence in the fairness of any inquiry before his committee.
The real problem, as we are now learning, is that Chairman Schiff's office, and perhaps others, despite initial denials, were involved in advising the whistleblower before the complaint was filed.
Initially, when asked on national television about interactions with the whistleblower, Chairman Schiff unequivocally stated that, quote, we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.
We would like to. Now, however, it has been reported that the whistleblower approached the House Intelligence Committee with information and received guidance from the committee before filing a complaint with the Inspector General.
As a result, the Washington Post concluded that Chairman Schiff clearly made a statement that was false.
Anyone who was involved in the preparation or submission of the whistleblower's complaint cannot possibly act as a fair and impartial judge In the same matter, particularly after misleading the American people about his involvement.
All of this raises serious questions that must be investigated.
However, the committees are preventing anyone, including the minority, from looking into these critically important matters.
At the very least, Chairman Schiff must immediately make available all documents relating to these issues.
After all, the American people have a right to know about the committee's own actions with regard to these matters.
Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the executive branch cannot be expected to participate in it.
Because participating in this inquiry under the current unconstitutional posture would inflict lasting institutional harm on the executive branch and lasting damage to the separation of powers.
You have left the president no choice.
Consistent with the duties of the President of the United States and in particular his obligation to preserve the rights of future occupants of his office, President Trump cannot permit his administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances.
Your recent letter to the Acting White House Chief of Staff argues that, quote, even if an impeachment inquiry were not underway, end quote, the Oversight Committee may seek this information as a matter of the established oversight process.
Respectfully, the committee cannot have it both ways.
The letter comes from the chairman of three different committees.
It transmits a subpoena, quote, pursuant to the House of Representatives impeachment inquiry.
It recites that the documents will, quote, be collected as part of the House's impeachment inquiry.
And it asserts that the documents will be, quote, shared among the committees as well as with the committee on the judiciary as appropriate.
The letter is in no way directed at collecting information in aid of legislation, and you simply cannot expect to rely on oversight authority to gather information for an unauthorized impeachment inquiry that conflicts with all historical precedent and rides roughshod over due process and the separation of powers.
If the committees wish to return to the regular order of oversight requests, we will stand ready to engage in that process as we have in the past, in a manner consistent with well-established bipartisan constitutional protections And a respect for the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution.
For the foregoing reasons, the President cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the executive branch from their work on behalf of the American people.
The President has a country to lead.
The American people elected him to do this job, and he remains focused on fulfilling his promises to the American people.
He has important work that must continue on their behalf, both at home and around the world, including continuing strong economic growth, extending historically low levels of unemployment, negotiating trade deals, fiscalization, and the future.
fixing our broken immigration system, lowering prescription drug prices, and addressing mass shooting violence.
We hope that, in light of the many deficiencies we have identified in your proceedings, you will abandon the current invalid efforts to pursue an impeachment inquiry and join the President in focusing on the many important goals that matter to the American people.
Thank you.
Sincerely, Pat A. Cipollone, counsel to the President.
Well, it's hard to imagine a more doomed and optimistic phrase than the end, but that's the President's reason why he's not participating.
So, Regarding obstruction of Congress, this is from the New York Post, if the president disagrees with what Congress is doing, then he should lawfully impede or obstruct its efforts.
And the proper way for Congress to push back on a frustrated president is not to resort to the extreme and uniquely anti-democratic remedy of impeachment, but to simply defund his legislative priorities or perhaps force a government shutdown.
Fact is, it is wholly improper and counter to the spirit embodied in our constitutional framework for Congress to attempt to impeach the President for obstructing its congressional responsibilities.
To pout over purported obstruction of Congress is to moan that the President is reasserting the truism that he is, in fact, a separate branch of government and capable of pushing back on the other branches.
The president, as head of the executive branch, is entitled to challenge in court legislative subpoenas that demand material that may be subject to claims of privilege.
He is also entitled to insist that the legislature obtain a court order before the executive branch complies.
That is how checks and balances work.
This is from the Gatestone Institute.
President Trump obstructed Congress by refusing to have members of the executive branch comply with congressional subpoenas without orders of the court.
Pelosi and the Democrats accused Trump of obstruction of Congress because he dared fight requests for documents and witnesses by appealing to the courts his obvious right to do so.
Yet now, she's actually the one obstructing Congress and the constitutional process here by denying the president a fair trial.
Also, Pelosi is withholding sending impeachment papers to the Senate.
Possibly meaning that he's not impeached and possibly in violation of the process until she is assured that she'll get a fair trial by which, of course, she's basically withholding passing information to the Senate until she's fairly guaranteed that the Senate will convict.
No, it's gross. Gatestone continues.
You can't just sit on the articles of impeachment, hoping that somehow and someday you'll get more evidence to support them that you don't have now, or until you hope the Senate changes and is more amenable to a guilty vote.
The Senate has complete power over the trial, according to the Constitution.
The House has no standing upon which to argue that the Senate must set terms agreeable to them.
All right, so what is going on?
What is the... crazy matrix behind this Never Trump derangement syndrome, this anti-Trump hysteria.
Well, there are two views of freedom in society.
So the first is freedom from want, which means other people have to be forced to subsidize whatever it is that you need or feel that you want.
And the other is freedom from coercion, which means free trade.
And if you want to help people, that's fine.
It's charity. But nobody has an implicit or axiomatic right to the products of your labor against your will, which they have to obtain either directly through theft or through the Secondhand theft of voting through government power to redistribute your income.
Now, there is a movement called progressivism.
It's basically slow socialism sleepwalking into communism or fascism, which says that we must have equality of outcome in society and the only way...
To have equality of outcome is to take from the rich and give to the poor, like Robin Hood, except stealing from productive people who are generally operating in the free market rather than some local lord sheriff of Nottingham or whatever, right?
So there's equality of opportunity, which means...
Everybody's free from coercion to pursue their life as they best see fit.
The pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of happiness.
And these two opposing viewpoints of life are currently colliding in the Democrats and in Trump.
I wouldn't even say in the Republicans as a whole because the Republicans have been playing a losing game for decades because they're so frightened of the media that they don't want to push back against creeping socialism in any but a kind of fundraising, language-based, kind of making promises they never fulfill kind of way.
So, it's sort of like this.
If you have a race, like a running race, right?
Everyone gets to start at the same place.
Everyone can run as fast as they can, and someone's going to win, someone's going to lose.
Someone's going to win, a lot of people are going to lose.
So, that's equality of opportunity.
Now, equality of outcome is everyone has to cross the finish line at the same time.
Now, that... It's a recipe for tyranny because every time you adjust how fast people run, you adjust how fast everyone else is run.
You have to micromanage everything and everyone, and then you have to punish people who step out of line.
And it's just an ever-escalating tumor of state power that consumes liberties, freedoms, joys, happiness, free will, and everything that makes life worthwhile for a remotely self-directed kind of human being.
So, the American Revolution stood for equality of opportunity and freedom from force.
You had a very small government designed to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Of course, originally, it was supposed to protect property, but because of the corruption of slavery, they couldn't say protection of property because you can't both be property and have property.
It was a contradiction in slavery.
So, the two revolutions that occurred not too dissimilar in timeframes was the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
Now, the American Revolution was for equality of opportunity, and the French Revolution was for equality of outcome.
The American experiment led to the freest country in the world, and the French Revolution led to the reign of terror, a resumption of the monarchy, and hundreds of thousands of people killed and Robespierre, and of course the guy who invented the guillotine, being beheaded by the guillotine and so on, and it was just a complete horror fest of raping nuns, murdering priests, slaughtering starvation.
It was a real crazy fest of mass murder, much as the communist takeover in China that I recently talked about in a documentary I hope you will really, really check out.
It's free. It's called Hong Kong Fight for Freedom.
You can get it at fdurl.com forward slash Hong Kong.
I'll put the link to it below.
So this called progressive movement, because apparently the word communistic is still distasteful to many, it started in the 19th century.
It first really manifested under Woodrow Wilson and then with the Federal Reserve created stock boom followed by the 13-14 year Great Depression that culminated in the worst war known to human history, the Second World War, Brought a lot of massive government interventions and controls under the three-term horror show of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Now, the fulfillment of the goal of equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity, equality of outcome.
Well, they've been working on this for over a century.
And they thought, the progressives thought they were going to have a 16-year reign to complete the This goal, this whole plan to have equality of outcome, to get rid of the free market, to have people become more and more dependent upon the state, and to be able to buy votes with the remaining capital of the former glories of the free market in eternity,
right? So they thought, okay, we survived the Reagan years, we survived the Bush years, now we've got eight years of Obama, we're going to get eight years of Hillary Clinton, those 16 years are going to be enough to sew up The socialist, progressive, en route to communism vision that the left has for America now.
When Trump got elected, against all odds, against all predictions, well, this threw a complete monkey wrench into the smooth machinery of the 16-year leftist takeover and destruction of the republic.
And particularly Trump's focus on having a sensible immigration system of trying to come back on the mass immigration into America, which is, of course, as we know, just propping up.
There would be no left if it wasn't for the mainstream media constantly attacking conservatives and praising the left, if there wasn't the indoctrination of the youth in the largely Marxist indoctrination camps that pass for higher education in America, where Marxists get to rail against the exploitation of the vulnerable while where Marxists get to rail against the exploitation of the vulnerable while strip mining the economic future of the financially illiterate youth that they
And so without the media, without Hollywood, without academia, without mass migration, there would be no Democratic Party.
And so they were really hoping to sew this one up to get enough votes in through indoctrination of mass migration that there would never be.
A Republican election success ever again.
I mean, the Republicans would turn into the Republican Party in California, which is lucky to get 20%, 25% of the vote.
And they would then reign supreme and continue to fulfill their agenda of destroying the remaining liberties of the republic.
Now that Trump got in, well, there were some real concerns that he was going to build a wall, some real concerns that he was going to try and control immigration and so on.
And what's going on behind the scenes, of course, is these judicial nominees that are going on under Trump.
But we're not just talking about Gorsuch.
We're not just talking about Kavanaugh, which, of course, they tried to destroy the poor man with all of these horrible allegations when he was going to be sworn in.
And, I mean, he got so traumatized, he's kind of voting along leftist lines as it stands.
But if Trump gets another four more years, then he's going to appoint even more judicial nominees who are conservative, which is, you know, they get to stay pretty much until they're carried out in a box.
You can see this with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who I think is going to be controlled by animatronics anytime soon.
So after four more years of Trump, up to 75% are federal judiciary nominees, and therefore the federal judiciary could actually become conservative.
And that is considered anathema to the left, who have, of course, been warming their way in through the Long March, through the institutions, and judicial activism.
They can't win with the American electorate, so they import voters.
If you can't convince people, just replace them with imported voters.
They can't convince the American electorate of their viewpoint, the left, and therefore they have just done judicial activism in order to pursue that particular agenda.
And so another four years of Trump would be a complete catastrophe, which is why they are reaching for this absolute...
Killswitch of impeachment for what?
For having a phone call with a guy saying, you might want to investigate this company.
I heard bad things happen. A guy got fired unjustly and the guy saying, yeah, we're going to look into it.
Based upon a treaty that was passed when Joe Biden was in the Senate and was signed into law by then President Clinton, there's nothing there.
There's no reason for impeachment.
of course, if there's no reason for impeachment, well, then this obstruction of Congress stuff makes no sense at all, right?
Because the only reason that they're pursuing obstruction of Congress charges as part of the impeachment is because the impeachment was considered to be valid.
If the impeachment is not valid, then the obstruction of Congress is also invalid.
And that's, of course, I think one of the cases being made by Trump's counsel.
Now, the mainstream media, of course, is horrendous as they usually are in this area.
They've really thrown in with this socialism, progressivism, creeping communism.
They've gone all the way. And the media, many of them, have openly stated, like, okay, we're supposed to be impartial, we're supposed to be objective, but in extremists, we can throw all of that out of the window, right?
If you're literally facing Hitler, then objectivity is not what you want to do.
And they have thrown all of that objectivity out of the window and become, you know, blank...
Finger puppets of Democrat talking points.
So like 90%, at least 90% of all the mainstream media coverage of Trump is negative.
Negative to the point of being like stalky, pathological, crazy stuff, right?
And of course the goal is not to impeach the President of the United States.
It's to impeach the voters, right?
If your President gets taken away, then it's your vote that's been impeached.
It's your say in the political process that has been annulled by Hysterical accusations based upon innocuous phone calls that happen to threaten presidential or potential presidential nominees on the Democrat side, Sid being Joe Biden.
So you need to make some noise, in my humble opinion, right?
So what's going on?
Why is it such an amoral, if downright immoral process?
You see, morals are for free people.
Morals are for free people.
Listen, everybody hates cannibalism, but a book I read when I was younger called Alive.
I was a kid, actually, when I read it.
Inappropriate book to read as a kid, but I read it anyway.
About a plane crash in the Andes where people turned to cannibalism because they had no food and the bodies were all frozen because they were high up, right?
So in extremis, when you are trapped and cornered and feel like you have no options, well, ethics are the physics of free people.
They barely figure into the calculations of people who aren't free.
And the half of the population in America and, of course, elsewhere in the West that has become fundamentally dependent upon government power, that has become fundamentally dependent upon the government taking from productive people, taking from the unborn.
Promising through unfunded liabilities to enslave future generations.
Those people who are currently relying upon government power, well, they can't afford morality.
They can't afford, well, let's look at the constitutional, right?
I mean, if you've got three kids by three different guys, you're dependent on food stamps and welfare payments.
Like you can't, oh, well, abstract discussions of property rights.
It's like my kids need to eat.
You know, it's all nice for you to make these moral noises, but the population has become pathologically dependent upon the power of the state.
And therefore, they really don't care how the power of the state is maintained.
And then you have these leftist black clad activists going out to defend the rage of their single moms that any welfare benefits might be interrupted.
And of course, on the other side, you have people who've gotten very used to the power of the state in enriching their big military industrial complex machineries, right?
So the people who are Multi-millionaires, multi-billionaires based upon the wealth being poured into the pockets of private war profiteers through the endless wars being pursued by America.
And if you have a president who wants to interrupt that endless flow of cash, which actually will end fairly soon, well, you're not going to like that person too much now, are you?
It's like when Princess Diana was railing against...
Landmines, well, a lot of people who made landmines didn't really like Princess Diana about that.
And standing between the gods of war and their prey is a highly hazardous business.
And this is how it is playing out.
Now, of course, what's going on is a very sort of complex political ploy as well.
Obviously, you want to accuse other people of what you're doing.
It gives a special kind of defensive ferocity to your accusations.
Because what's going to happen is...
I mean, it's not going to work, right?
I mean, the impeachment is not going to work.
It's largely theater. And they don't want to go forward with this, right?
Because heaven forbid, this is why they don't want to give the subpoena power to the minority.
Heaven forbid that the defense on Trump's side gets to call their own witnesses and gets to cross-examine witnesses.
They don't want any of that stuff, which is why they're doing all of this terrible stuff, which the White House Counsel is calling unconstitutional.
I'm no lawyer, but it seems kind of hard to argue that if you can't cross-examine the witness, if you can't see all available evidence, if you can't see transcripts, if you're not allowed to have counsel present when you're under a deposition, I mean, that's all terrible, terrible stuff.
It's all horrifying violations of standard common law and constitutional legal procedures.
So what's going to happen is...
It's going to fail.
And then, of course, the Democrats get a run around screaming like on Mach 8 with their hair on fire that it was all an unjust process.
And then, you see, if during or after this process investigations begin into Joe Biden, they can say, hey, it was the president who did really bad things.
He's only investigating us now as payback for the just process we put him through that the evil Republicans thwarted in the Senate.
So they get to play victim. They get to say, well, Trump is just – it's payback.
It's not a real investigation.
It's just payback for us investigating him and all of that, right?
And I haven't done a lot of work on this impeachment stuff because, to me, it's a lot of political theater.
And it's all designed really with one goal in mind, which is to distract the American public from the slow creep of population displacement.
Because, of course, they can overturn this election or they'll try to.
I think they'll fail.
Overturn this election through impeachment.
But there's a much more subtle and insidious process that's going on in America and throughout the West, which is simply bringing endless millions of people in who are going to reliably vote for the left because they come from cultures or countries or histories or political systems where the sort of small government libertarian rule of law stuff that a lot which is simply bringing endless millions of people in who are going to reliably vote for the left because It doesn't sort of fit.
It doesn't grok with their sensibilities.
And so the impeachment thing is just a way of paralyzing the president from doing anything about immigration and distracting Americans from the fact that the republic is really being subverted by importing people who vote against the founding principles of the republic, destroying any
capacity for a political party to survive and thrive that might oppose this sort of creeping socialist progressive agenda, and ending up with a country that is no longer a singular experiment in how small a government can be, but just another singular experiment.
Self-detonating, no-middle-class, rich, poor, hollowed-out oligarchy borrowing its way into a Venezuelan-style socialist grave of your former freedoms.
So keep your eye on the ball.
Keep thinking about immigration.
Keep your eye on impeachment because it's very instructive.
But it's other things that really need your attention.
This is Stefan Molyneux. Thank you so much for watching and listening.
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