Enter Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. During the 16-hour question and answer period of last week’s impeachment trial, Sen. Paul twice asked the Chief Justice of the United States a question that incorporated the name of the “Whistleblower,” although it did not mention the word “Whistleblower” nor ask his identity. Nonetheless, the Chief Justice declined to read the question. Later Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, reworded the question, even referring to “an individual alleged as the whistle-blower,” but omitting the name asked by Sen. Paul, and asked it of the Chief Justice, who did read the question. Of course, indignant inquisitor Adam Schiff refused to answer the question, but the key fact is this: When Sen. Paul asked the question that used the actual name, the Chief Justice did not read it. When Sen. Johnson asked the question, actually using the word “whistleblower” but not the name, the Chief Justice read it. This leaves us little choice but to conclude that, although Adam Schiff might pretend he does not know the identity of the “whistleblower,” the Chief Justice is pretty sure who it is, and so does practically everyone else. No other explanation makes any sense, as there could have been no other reason why the question wasn’t asked except because it included the embargoed name.
Gagging the Chief Justice isn’t the only unusual aspect of the Impeachment Trial. We had House Manager Hakeem Jefferies present the novel legal argument that if one pays for foreign influence (that is, the Steele Dossier, paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign) it isn’t foreign influence. We had the House Managers declare that there could be no possible reason for President Trump to seek an investigation into the crooked activities of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma except to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, even though members of the Obama State Department raised grave concerns about potential conflicts of interest, as did numerous articles in the mainstream and progressive media. We had the house managers say that the President showed no interest in any of this until Joe Biden declared for the Presidency in April of 2019, even though the “whistleblower’s” original letter uses the date of September 2018. One would have though they would have been more familiar with the contents of that letter.
The House’s case for impeachment was impaired because the President did not commit a crime or break a law, so they finessed the issue by not even claiming he broke the law, instead concocting two imaginary crimes of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress,” two charges so vague, indistinct and flexible that, had those standards prevailed, almost every President from George Washington on should have been “impeached.”
And, just as we had Julie Swetnick and a few other “witnesses,” liars all, come forth at the last moment of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Hey! Presto! excerpts from John Bolton’s forthcoming book appeared “in the nick of time,” the Democrats hoped. Funny, isn’t it, how they believe they have overwhelmingly made their case, yet spend hours concentrating on “new” evidence and hoping against hope that it will be enough to make their case; but if it isn’t they will disgorge some more, we are sure. Congressman Schiff spent years declaring that he had unequivocal proof of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia; when the Mueller report found none of that evidence, Mr. Schiff barely blinked; he just pretended that the proof was there, anyway. Next, they latched on to the phone call to the Ukrainian President. That was to overwhelm all the other evidence they had and make the case, but as The Federalist website reports, “At first the alleged crime was supposed to be a campaign finance violation, then bribery, then extortion.” Of course, it was none of those, so none of those charges made it into an impeachment article, although the House managers pretended they were true anyway.
As to the Bolton bombshell, the former National Security Advisor wrote that the President wanted to withhold aid from Ukraine unless they investigated the Biden family connections with Burisma. That certainly is a plausible statement, but overlooks one important fact: the full amount of aid was delivered, prior to the end of the fiscal year; and the Ukrainians did not undertake an investigation. Alan Dershowitz referred to these as “thought crimes,” and they aren’t really crimes at all.