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The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump Must Begin Now
After the release of the redacted version of the Mueller report, it was clear that Attorney General Barr had misrepresented its contents via the memo he sent to Congress about it. It was clear when Barr released his memo that it wasn’t the same thing as releasing the Mueller report, but with the release of the Mueller report itself, this is crystal clear.
The question before the people of the United States is whether Impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump are warranted. Impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump need to begin now. To me, this means public hearings.
For some, Impeachment represents a strategic misfire, because the lack of a Democratic majority in the Senate means that Trump won’t be convicted. I find this argument problematic for many reasons; it assumes that, for example, Republicans in the Senate could tolerate a 24% approval rating for Trump. But if we accept the argument on its face, there’s a reasonable case to be made that leaving Trump to his own devices and simply waiting for an election is a strategically better option. This is premised, at least partly, on the idea that the Impeachment of Bill Clinton in from 1998–1999 hurt the Republican Party.
Strategically, Impeachment proceedings don’t hurt political parties who use them for the right reasons, when actual crimes and…