House Democrats Lose: What’s Next

The United States Senate is set to acquit President Donald Trump of the allegations contained in the House of Representatives’ articles of impeachment. The vote is expected to be largely along party lines with the only dissenting Republican likely to be Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT). (Must we always have that Republican who believes he should have been president and having been rejected by the voters seeks to damage any other Republican who gets ahead of him in line – first we had former Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and now we have Mr. Romney.) It is possible that as many as three Democrats might also vote for acquital – Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va), John Tester (D-MT) and Doug Jones (D-AL). Others have mentioned Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) but that is just wishful thinking. Of those four, Mr. Manchin is the most likely to vote for acquittal – he thinks the House process was a joke and the House managers are rank amateurs who have difficulty distinguishing between facts and wishes.

So what’s next? Well, the short answer is nothing will be done. The House Democrats with the blessing of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will continue the investigations in a continuing futile attempt to either overturn the 2016 election or significantly alter the outcome of the 2020 election. They have to. There is something here that is more than Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is something here more than resistance to the effort by Mr. Trump to “drain the swamp.” There is something here that is rotten and rotten to the core. And seemingly it all traces back to the Ukraine.

By any measure the Ukraine is easily the most corrupt country in the world. Literally billions of dollars of foreign aid have flowed into the Ukraine during the presidency of Barack Obama and particularly during the period of time when Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. And at the same time, millions of dollars flowed back out of the Ukraine, primarily from Ukrainian families closely tied to the government and in direct or indirect beneficiaries of the foreign aid and into the pockets of the Clinton Foundation, the Biden family, and an assortment of high ranking administration officials and advisors to Mr. Obama. So it is not surprising that the Ukraine began and remains as the center of controversy surrounding Mr. Trump’s impeachment. It began with Democrat operatives, presumably at the behest of Ms. Clinton, asking Ukrainian officials to help dig up dirt on Mr. Trump. It involved Ukrainian operatives as sources for the phony “dossier” compiled by former British agent Christopher Steele using Russian and Ukrainian sources. It became the genesis of the allegations that Mr. Trump was a Russian agent which was then pushed by Ms. Clinton’s minions to the State Department, the Justice Department, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Administration. The irony was the Mr. Trump was being investigated by holdovers from the Obama administration for “crimes” that Ms. Clinton and her campaign were actually committing.

But it didn’t end there. When the phony dossier and everything that went with it fell apart, the same Democrats who sponsored that charade quickly shifted to accusations of bribery alleging that Mr. Trump withheld aid to the Ukraine unless it helped dig up dirt on Mr. Biden while in fact Mr. Biden bragged about doing exactly the same thing unless Ukrainian officials shut down a corruption investigation involving the company for which his son was being paid over a million dollars a year as a “director.” I mean these people have chutzpah.

Now as we stand at the threshold of Mr. Trump’s acquittal on those charges we are left to wonder. What in the hell was going on with the Ukraine and the parade of Democrat stalwarts benefiting from the Ukraine’s largesse – largesse provided primarily by taxpayer funds in the form of foreign aid? It sounds much like the same scam that the public employee unions routinely ran with the Democrats by promoting tax increases for them so that they could increase wages and benefits for public employee union members who in turn increased the amount of dues to the union members which in turn increased the amount of political contributions to the Democrats. And who would care – the money was free? Because that is how they view taxpayer money – free – as long as the money came from taxpayers not from any of the pockets of those involved.

But something yet may happen. Attorney General Bill Barr has commissioned John Durham as special counsel to investigate all that surrounded the beginnings of the phony “Russia collusion probe.” By all accounts Mr. Durham is a serious man with significant skills. He is empowered to use grand juries in order to pursue and even compel the truth. He is well underway and as any competent prosecutor he is keeping the process close to the vest. (Contrast that to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) who chose to run his mouth rather than do his job.) My guess is that by summer’s end Mr. Durham will deliver his report along with a series of indictments – including former justice department lawyers, FBI officials and probably senior members of the CIA and NSA.

Add to that the recent threats of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to begin hearings in the United States Senate to get to the bottom of the inquisition in the House including calling, among others: Mr. Schiff, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the alleged whistleblowers (with a hint that (s)he may have been an aid to Mr. Biden) and the various members of the FBI, CIA, and Justice Departments who participated in promoting a knowing fraud in their accusations against Mr. Trump. The book is still out on whether Mr. Graham means business or is just running his mouth. Let’s hope for the former.

So in summary it will be business as usual in the House with empty accusation and nothing getting done. It could be interesting in the Senate should Mr. Graham proceed. But the main event will still be Mr. Durham. And meantime you can entertain yourself watching the Clinton/Kerry/Obama wing of the Democrat Party systematically deny Sen. Bernie Sanders the Democrat nomination for president. Stay tuned.

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