Democrats target Trump after release of Mueller memos
President Trump's critics push impeachment and possibility of prison time for the president after the release of Mueller memos; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
An unhinged pack of liberal Democrats is poised to take over the House of Representatives in less than 30 days, and its members have made relentless investigations of President Trump their top priority.
Democratic House members are now lobbying to get seats on the Judiciary Committee because they’ve apparently already decided to try to impeach President Trump before sending one document request to the White House. If you think the last two years on Capitol Hill have been a hyper-partisan mess, you best buckle up.
After eight long years in the political wilderness, these House Democrats are about to take things straight into the gutter. They have no choice; their radical base wants impeachment at any cost, as do some of their biggest donors.
The last time impeachment was being discussed so frequently in Washington was back in 1998, when I served as the chief investigator for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. This committee will be chaired by Congressman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., starting in January.
During my time working for the committee, we were charged with the task of investigating President Bill Clinton and his administration for the Republican majority headed by Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
And investigate we did.
The chairman of the committee back then was Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and he was determined to get to the bottom of some of the most egregious Clinton scandals of the day. These included investigating whether China tried to influence the 1996 presidential election by funneling illegal campaign contributions to the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.
The top Democrat on the committee was Rep. Henry Waxman of California. Twenty years later I can say that he and his tough professional staff were the best of the best in their passionate defense of the Clinton White House. I called them a pack of killers.
Incoming Republican ranking members Doug Collins of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Devin Nunes of California should all study the way former Rep. Waxman’s minority committee members ran their operation in 1997 and 1998, because two decades later the rules are the same.
The first rule the Republicans should follow is to go out and hire seasoned staff with lots of legal and communications experience. The ranking Republican members of the House Judiciary, Oversight, and Intelligence Committees are the top defenders of President Trump on Capitol Hill and they must now find their own pack of killers.
They should not believe for one minute that their current legislative staff will suffice, because in a matter of months they’re going to be engaged in hand-to-hand combat, the likes of which they’ve never seen.
Let’s not be naïve; incoming Democratic committee chairmen Jerrold Nadler of New York, Adam Schiff of California, and the aforementioned Elijah Cummings are coming to take down a presidency by any means necessary.
The second rule is to keep the scope of any inquiry limited to avenues of legitimate congressional oversight, which in this case are activities of the Trump administration since Donald Trump became president on January 20, 2017.
In our system of checks and balances, the legislative branch is charged with acting as a check on the executive branch. However, that does not mean investigating a president’s personal life, business dealings and tax returns from years and years ago.
The third rule is never give an inch, because the majority will always take a mile. This means, in addition to limiting the scope of any inquiry, these Republicans must question the need for every hearing, contest the reason for every subpoena, and stick to the message. The message is that Democrats are not interested in legitimate fact-finding, because they’ve already decided on the outcome: impeachment.
Next year will mark the fourth since “Partisan Peter” Strzok of the FBI and his colleagues began their disgraceful witch hunt of President Trump’s campaign in July 2016. The American people already have investigation fatigue and are sick and tired of their government wasting tens of millions in taxpayer dollars on the never-ending anti-Trump political hit job.
What the American people really want is for the Democratic House, the Republican Senate and President Trump’s White House to work together to solve difficult problems through innovative policies.
Unfortunately, the incoming Democratic majority in the House is being held hostage by the crazed resistance movement its left-wing donors. Let’s see how badly they squander their two years in power.
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