https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/14/this-has-be-one-most-successful-failures-modern-political-history/?fbclid=IwAR3XqwnH_eJmHqObeWsjzCn1286uy_0qY3vEsPPqu2RdyOWsI6x4FOfOv00This has to be one of the most successful failures in modern political history
This had to be one of the most successful failures — one of the most triumphant defeats — in modern political history.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) clearly failed in the stated aim of her four-week delay in sending impeachment articles to the Senate: to withhold the articles and the naming of impeachment managers until, as she put it last month, “we see the process that is set forth in the Senate.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t reveal his impeachment resolution and made no commitment to bring forth witnesses or documents.
But Pelosi’s delay seems to have blunted any hope President Trump’s defenders had of dismissing the charges without a trial. Before the speaker’s gambit, McConnell pledged that “there will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.” Trump is now calling for a dismissal, but Senate Republicans say they won’t allow that.
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Credit the delay. Public attention to the dispute and to former Trump national security adviser John Bolton’s willingness to testify makes it more difficult for Republicans to dismiss the charges. It also left time for investigators to obtain notes and phone records of indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas; released in part Tuesday night, they show, among other things, that people working with Giuliani apparently had Marie Yovanovitch, then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, under surveill
The biggest benefit of the 28-day delay, though, could not have been predicted when Pelosi sent the nation on this path. Many of the behaviors that got Trump impeached have returned in other guises for all to see:
He took the nation to the verge of war with Iran based on a lie: that his assassination of a top Iranian general was justified by an “imminent” threat, specifically a planned attack against four U.S. embassies. When the world learned that Trump had fabricated it, he claimed “it doesn’t really matter” whether there is an imminent threat before he engages in hostilities — an assault on congressional authority to declare war.
He is simultaneously preparing to assault congressional power of the purse. As The Post’s Nick Miroff reported, Trump plans to divert an extra $7.2 billion for a border wall — five times the amount Congress authorized — by siphoning money away from military construction and counternarcotics efforts.
Trump has also refused to release $18 billion of congressionally approved disaster aid for Puerto Rico, which just suffered a 6.4-magnitude earthquake on top of the lingering effects from Hurricane Maria in 2017. Other (whiter) U.S. citizens got better treatment following natural disasters.
Trump’s 2016 political benefactor, Russia, has been caught interfering in the 2020 e******n to help Trump. Russia’s military spy agency, the GRU, hacked Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board H****r B***n served and that was at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. Trump tried to force Ukraine to give him politically helpful dirt on the Bidens — and now Russia appears ready to oblige.
After the past four weeks, Senate Republicans will have a more difficult time disregarding the consequences of excusing Trump’s wrongdoing. They’re knowingly blessing his claims of unilateral power to make war and spend taxpayer dollars and leaving him in a position to owe ree******n to the same man who helped him win a first term: Vladimir Putin.