The Cost of A Democrat Charade

A friend of mine called me over the weekend and to say he was livid would be a gross understatement. What was stuck in his craw was the amount of time, money, and energy that has been expended by the Democrats in pursuit of the impeachment of President Donald Trump. I told him that I had no idea but that I assumed that it was hundreds of millions of dollars.

You and I as private citizens lack the resources to shuffle through the accounts of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine the amount prior to, during and subsequent to the Mueller special counsel investigation. FoxNews reported on July 24, 2019:

“According to biannual reports released by the special counsel’s office, Mueller and his team spent $12.3 million in direct spending between his appointment on May 17, 2017 and Sept. 30, 2018. The office also said it incurred $12.9 million in “indirect” Justice Department spending, a category it described as “neither legally required” for disclosure, nor reported in filings by previous special counsels.

“Mueller’s office said the indirect expenses did not amount to additional taxpayer expenditures since these resources would have been devoted to other cases, such as personnel at the FBI, if there had been no special counsel investigation.

“On average, the office spent roughly $8.4 million per each six-month period. If the final statement — which has still not been released — remains on par with previous costs, total spending from the investigation is expected to reach $34 million in both direct and indirect spending.”

Those amounts do not include amounts expended by the White House, the various other federal departments that were required to respond to inquiries from the Justice Department, the special counsel’s office or the FBI. My experience as a lawyer suggests that more time was spent on searching, organizing and responding to those inquiries than was expended by the Justice Department, special counsel’s office and the FBI in asking and examining the responses. You would expect that for every dollar spent directly or indirectly by the Justice Department, the special counsel’s office and the FBI a similar amount was expended by these federal agencies. So toss in another $35 Million.

The Daily Signal estimated that the cost of the investigation by the House Intelligence Committee was in excess of $3 Million:

“The $3.06 million price tag for taxpayers of the formal impeachment inquiry so far includes the salaries of 106 congressional employees who largely didn’t attend to normal duties from September through December.

“It also includes the estimated hourly fees of six lawyers of record for witnesses who appeared during hearings, whether behind closed doors or public.

“The total likely is a low estimate because it does not factor in overtime hours for U.S. Capitol Police when House hearings ran well into the late evening. The total also doesn’t include the cost of executive branch expenses, travel costs for witnesses, or supplies and materials.”

And that was just for the four months preceding the referral of articles of impeachment. No similar information is available regarding the nearly eight months preceding that period nor of the parallel investigation being conducted by the House Judiciary Committee during the same period of time. Again it would be safe to assume that the same monthly amount of staff, travel and research was being pursued by both committees prior to the formal proceedings so add an additional $6 Million for each committee – $15 Million all told.

Again, the White House and federal agencies required to respond to such investigations easily devoted the same amount of time responding, as did the House committees investigating. So add another $15 Million.

The amounts above relating to Congressional expenditures are only for the period of time since the Democrats took control of the House. But you need to go back farther because all of this began with the election of Mr. Trump and the pursuit of “Russian collusion” by both House and Senate committees. Pursuit based solely on the phony dossier commissioned by Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff and driven by Democrat loyalists in the FBI, Justice Department, State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and holdovers in the White House. It was a wilding* of entrenched Democrat appointees fearful of losing their positions and power. It was the same mentality as the morons in President Bill Clinton’s White House who systematically removed the “W’s” from the White House typewriters in a pique because George W. Bush was elected to succeed Mr. Clinton. The same mentality spread wider and boosted by the corruption of the administration of President Barack Obama.

An October 18, 2017 article in USA Today noted:

“Congress is spending millions of dollars on investigations of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, but it’s impossible to tell from public reports exactly how much the probes are costing taxpayers — and the committees running the investigation refuse to talk about it.”

And that is precisely the point. Even though we can safely assume that over $100 Million has been spent thus far we may never know the full cost of this charade. But what we do know is that whatever amounts were spent by the Democrats it was taxpayer money – our money. Not a dime of their own money. Not a dime from Ms. Clinton, not a dime from Nancy Pelosi, Not a dime from Chuck Schumer, not a dime from Adam Schiff. None of them. It was our money for their private power grab. Our money for their charade. And I use the term “charade” advisedly because the whole process began with a knowing lie, spun with wishful thinking and driven home with conjecture, innuendo and third, fourth and fifth hearsay. There should be an accounting. But there won’t be because this is the “swamp” attacking the outsiders and protecting their own.

The one overriding reason to return Mr. Trump to office is to finish the job of draining the swamp. Public officials and public employees need to be held accountable. People need to indicted, people need to be convicted, and people need to go to jail.

And if it costs another $100 Million to turn the tables on these vermin, it will be the best money we have spent since winning World War II.

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* A wilding is often described as “the activity by a gang of youths of going on a protracted and violent rampage in a public place, attacking people at random.” I think that fits quite well here.

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