The Democratic Party’s attempt to impeach President Donald Trump was just as inevitable as it is useless.
The House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry is a waste of time and resources with murky legal grounds.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi first announced the inquiry onSept. 24 responding to news that Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the exploits of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
Trump’s actions revealed a, “Betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said.
Reuters reported that there is no evidence that Joe Biden used his position as vice president during the Obama administration to help his son.
In the transcript of a phone conversation between Trump and Zelensky, Trump only provided vague statements asking if Zelensky could, “look into it.”
According to AP News, that phone call followed a month-long campaign from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to convince Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the country and Trump’s suspension of military aid to Ukraine.
Although the president’s actions are certainly backhanded and morally questionable, most Trump supporters will likely write them off as his usual antics; Something they have likely already come to terms with.
Unless an investigation reveals a cover-up effort from the White House, Trump’s removal from office will hinge on the Democrats ability to convince the Senate that the president abused his power.
According to Reuters, legal experts believe that proving Trump put his personal interests over the American people’s by leveraging military aid will be the key to the impeachment.
However, a judgment call on Trump’s motivations will be easy for Republicans to ignore or twist.
David Rivkin, constitutional litigator and former Justice Department lawyer, told Reuters it is appropriate to ask a foreign power to investigate a U.S. citizen who may have broken local laws in that country.
Even if the House had a stronger legal case against President Trump, the Senate is stacked against the impeachment effort.
The Republican Party holds a majority in the Senate with 53 out of 100 members.
Convicting the president would require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate totaling 63 members, which would necessitate Republicans voting against their party.
Beyond the stacked political odds, removing a president through the impeachment process is borderline impossible in the first place.
Former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton are the only presidents in American history to be impeached by the House of Representatives, and both were eventually acquitted by the Senate.
Also, the public support and interest in impeaching Trump is not nearly as strong as the Democrats need to not harm their reputation through this effort.
According to global news website Quartz, online marketing platform SEMrush analyzed Google and Twitter to find that online interest in impeaching President Trump peaked in May 2017.
Out of 60,000 tweets about the impeachment inquiry that SEMrush studied, Quartz reported that 6% criticized the president, 9.4% supported him and 84.5% were neutral.
Former President Gerald Ford once said that, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
The Democratic Party is taking that quote a little too seriously, because if the Senate predictably votes along party lines, the attempt to remove President Trump from office or discredit him will be a massive failure.
