(The Guess Who, rock group from Canada, came out with the song No Time in 1969.)
What Time is It
There’s no time left. No time left to figure out funding for Ukraine. No time left to fund Israel, with or without restrictions on their military actions. And there’s not even time left to fund the American Southern Border, supposedly the highest priority for the Radical Republican House of Representatives.
There’s no time to solve the biggest concerns of American foreign policy. After all, we are only weeks away from Christmas, New Year, and a whole new series of crises that befall Washington, DC come 2024. Remember that budget deal cut by the new Speaker, Mike Johnson, they kept the Government open? It’s back again, this time without Johnson’s “honeymoon period” with his own Party extremists. Surely, they’ll be little time for Ukrainian aid, or Israeli aid and control, or the 12,000 migrants hitting the Southern Border each day. No time left for them.
But there sure is time to start the impeachment of President Joe Biden. Well, not really start the impeachment, but begin an “impeachment inquiry”. That resolution will be on the floor of the House today (Wednesday), superseding all of the other “crisis” issues in America. The House of Representatives is establishing this priority, Biden first, everything else, last. There’s no time left for them.
Factual Predicate
And, for the few Republicans who read these essays, I hear you. This is “tit-for-tat”, paybacks for the two impeachments of Donald Trump. Of course it is. My argument to you is that the first impeachment of Donald Trump, over the so-called “perfect” phone call to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, seeking “dirt” on Joe Biden in exchange for military funding; opened with solid evidence. Trump DID make the phone call, he DID ask for “dirt”, he DID threaten US funding.
To use a legal phrase learned in the eternal world of FBI investigations: there was a “factual predicate” for opening an impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. And while Democrats never had an impeachment inquiry for the January 6th impeachment, they also were all eye-witnesses to the predicate and facts of that day.
And so, what is the “factual predicate” for the impeachment, or even the inquiry, into Joe Biden? To paraphrase a twice impeached President, it’s “Hunter, Hunter, Hunter” (instead of “Russia, Russia, Russia”; an issue which also could have risen to the level of impeachment). And, to use another legal phrase, let me stipulate a fact. Hunter is a bad person: he was a drug addict, a “fallen” lawyer, willing to trade on his family name for financial gain, and a tax evader to boot. For the family’s sake, I hope Hunter is reformed, but he definitely screwed up. They should impeach him.
Sins of the Son
Oh, wait a minute. Hunter is a private citizen, not a public official. So you can’t impeach him, or hold a “trial” in front of the House or Senate on his actions. So what’s the “factual predicate” linking Biden the father to Biden the son?
Nothing: the investigations go all the way back to BEFORE Trump’s call to Zelenskyy, BEFORE Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine to find dirt on Hunter, even BEFORE Lev and Igor got the information from Russian Intelligence sources. There’s plenty of crap about Hunter, Hunter, Hunter; but nothing that ties the son to the father, when it comes to illegal gains.
When the FBI opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign, they had a “factual predicate”. Even the internal Justice Department investigation agreed to that. And it wasn’t based on the Steele Dossier, but the actual testimony of an Australian diplomat about a conversation with a Trump campaign advisor. When the House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s call to Zelenskyy, it was based on the actual testimony of Colonel Vindman about the conversation.
Making Smoke
But the House right now “ain’t got it”. Forget a “smoking gun”, they can’t even find the weapon. They have a lot of “what if’s”. What if Hunter gave the money to his father? What if Biden intervened illegally for his son? But, after seven years of investigation, all Republicans have managed to do is generate a lot of smoke, but found no fire.
It’s their smoke; that only exists because of their actions. And now they are using that “smoke” to justify their investigation. So what’s the real priority? Former Speaker and continuing Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy said this, way back in 2015:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought” (WAPO).
It’s not about Joe Biden, or even Hunter. This is simply a bad repeat of the Benghazi hearings, $7.8 millions of American tax money spent to drag Hillary Clinton down. It worked in for 2016, maybe it will work again in 2024. It’s about “softening the ground” so that Donald Trump can have a chance to avoid jail, and win back the Presidency.
And the scary part is, right or wrong, it worked in 2016. Here we go again, because when it comes to winning the Presidency; we always have time for that.
