The Frightened Left
September 11, 2023
Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

An impeachment inquiry looms and the shrieks of outrage are beginning.

The Left is now suddenly voicing warnings that those who recently undermined the system could be targeted by their own legacies.

So, for example, now we read why impeachment is suddenly a dangerous gambit.

True, the Founders did not envision impeaching a first-term president the moment he lost his House majority. Nor did they imagine impeaching a president twice. And they certainly did not anticipate trying an ex-president in the Senate as a private citizen.

In modern times, the nation has not rushed to impeach a president without a special counsel investigation to determine whether the chief executive was guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But thanks to the Democrats, recent impeachments now have destroyed all those guardrails. After all, Trump was impeached the first time on the fumes of an exhaustive but fruitless 22-month, $40 million special counsel investigation—one designed to find him guilty of Russian “collusion” and thus to be removed from office but found no actionable offenses at all.

Instead, dejected Democrats moved immediately for a second try. In September 2019 a few weeks after Trump had announced his 2020 ree******n bid, the Democratic House began to impeach the president on the new grounds that he had talked to the President Zelensky of Ukraine and said he might delay offensive arms shipments—unless the Ukrainians could demonstrate that they had ended corruption and, in particular, were no longer influenced by the Biden family quid pro quo shakedowns.

Trump was proven right: the Biden family is not just corrupt, but, in particular, Joe Biden as head of the family and Vice President had intervened in the internal politics of an aid recipient, by threatening not to delay but rather to cancel outright all U.S. aid to Ukraine—unless it fired Viktor Shokin, a Ukrainian prosecutor.

Shokin was then looking into the misadventures of Biden’s son H****r, and why the Vice President’s imbecilic son was receiving lucrative compensation on the boards of a Ukrainian energy company Burisma, yet without any demonstrable expertise or education in matters of energy policy.

Since Trump was impeached, we now know that Joe Biden did lie that he had no connection with or even knowledge of his son’s business. And we know that the fired prosecutor believed the Bidens were recipients of bribes. We know that contrary to Biden’s assertions, he was not following State Department policy.

In contrast, the U.S. had, in fact, lauded Shokin’s efforts to repress corruption. In sum, Biden was undermining the stated policy of the U.S. government to protect his son’s—and his own—efforts to leverage money from Kyiv by monetizing the influence of his own Vice Presidency. In some sense, Biden was guilty of the very “treason” charge—altering U.S. foreign policy for personal benefit—by which Rep. Adam Schiff had earlier falsely accused Trump.

Given that reality, it is easy to argue that the House impeached Donald Trump in 2019 for crimes that he did not commit, but which the current president Joe Biden most certainly had during his Vice Presidency.

But weaponizing impeachment is just one baleful legacy of the Left. There are plenty more of their own precedents that L*****ts now would not wish to have applied to themselves:

Will the next president have the FBI pay social media censors to suppress the dissemination of any news it feels is unhelpful to the ree******n of a Republican president?
Is it OK now for the next Vice President to invite his son onto Air Force Two to cement multimillion dollars deals that benefit both, with Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian oligarchs who enjoy government ties?
Should a conservative billionaire stealthily insert $419 million late in the 2024 campaign to absorb the work of registrars in key v****g precincts?
If a Democratic president wins the 2024 e******n should conservative groups r**t at the Capitol on Inauguration Day? Should a conservative celebrity yell out to the assembled crowd of protestors that she dreams of blowing up the White House? And if a Republican wins, should he prosecute any Democratic r****rs who once again swarm Washington on Inauguration Day and charge them with “i**********n,” meting out long prisons sentences to the convicted?
Is Joe Biden now vulnerable to being impeached for systematic family corruption, or using the Department of Justice to obstruct the prosecution of his son in his last days in office, and then being tried in the Senate as a private citizen?
If the Republicans gain the Senate, will they move to end the filibuster in agreement with Democratic assertions that it is “r****t” and a “Jim Crow relic”?
If the midwestern E*******l College “Blue Wall” seems to reappear, or if Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada recreate new blue walls, will there be a conservative effort to end the constitutionally mandated E*******l College?
If in 2024 there is a narrow Democratic win in the E*******l College, should conservative celebrities conspire to run ads urging the e*****rs to reject their constitutional duties and not v**e in accordance with their state’s popular v**e that went Democratic? Should a Republican third-party candidate sue to stop a state’s se******n of its e*****rs on grounds the v****g machines were r****d?
If Supreme Court decisions begin to appear to favor the left, will Republicans talk of packing the court, or have the DOJ turn a blind eye when mobs began to swarm the homes of liberal justices? Should the conservative media go after liberal judges with serial accusations of corruption? Should the Republican Senate leader assemble a mob of pro-life protestors at the doors of the court and call out Justices Sotomayor or Jackson by name, with threats that they will soon reap the whirlwind they have sowed, given they have no idea of what is about to “hit” them? Should conservative legal scholars urge the country to ignore Supreme Court decisions deemed liberal?
Will local prosecutors in red jurisdictions begin filing criminal charges against leading Democratic candidates on various charges, among them accusations of old inflated real estate assessments, campaign finance laws, questioning b****t results, or taking classified documents home? If Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton were to run in 2024, will their past illicit behavior gain the attention of a city or state attorney in Utah, West Virginia, or Wyoming?
If Joe Biden continues to decline at his present rate, will Republicans demand he be given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment? Will they subpoena Ivy League psychiatrists to testify that an intervention is needed to remove him from office? And will an FBI director and a deputy Attorney General plan to wear wires, and record Biden in his private moments of senility, as a way of convincing the cabinet or Congress that he is demonstrably mentally unfit for office?
In the 2024 e******n, should the Republican nominee hire a foreign ex-spy to compile falsehoods about the Democratic opponent and then seed them among the media, and Department of Justice? Should the FBI hire such a Republican contractor and likewise use him to gather dirt on the Democratic nominee?
If there appears incriminating evidence concerning a Republican nominee, should the FBI retrieve such evidence, keep it under wraps, lie about its veracity, and instead go along with media and ex-intelligence officers assertions that it is a fraudulent production of Russian intelligence?
Will conservative CIA and FBI directors, and the Director of National Intelligence be given exemptions from prosecutions for systematically lying while under oath in Congress or to federal investigators?
Will conservative celebrities ritually on social media, without fear of censorship, brag about ways of decapitating, shooting, stabbing, burning, or blowing up the Democratic nominee?
Since in many states the statues of limitations have not yet expired for arson, murder, assault, l**ting, and attacks on 1,500 police officers during the summer 2020 r**ts, will state prosecutors now begin identifying those 14,000 once arrested and mostly released, and begin refiling charges of conspiracy, racketeering—and “i**********n”?
Will they also file i**********n charges against those who torched a federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic Washington DC church, or conspired to r**t and swarm the White House grounds in an effort to attack the President of the United States?
Will they file charges against Vice President Kamala Harris for “inciting” ongoing violent demonstrations with monotonous, emphatic, and repetitive threats in the weeks before her nomination? Contrary to liberal “fact checkers” at time of nationwide violence, Harris certainly did not distinguish violent from non-violent protests, but in fact implied that they were intimately tied to the upcoming e******n and beyond. So given the hundreds of police officers injured, the hundreds of millions in property damage, and the dozens k**led, what exactly did Harris mean by tying that ongoing summer of often violent protests to E******n Day?:
“But they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before E******n Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after E******n Day. Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up — and they should not. And we should not.”

Was the above more or less inflammatory than Trump’s J****** 6 remarks for which in part he is under indictment: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore…I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”?

In sum, the Democratic leadership along with the media long ago deemed that Donald Trump posed such an existential threat to democracy that they were entitled to destroy democratic norms to destroy him.

Their actions were predicated on three assumptions: one, they had that right because they were more sophisticated, morally superior, and smarter than the rest of America and thus deserved the exemption to blow up customs and norms to achieve the “correct” ends; two, wh**ever damage they did to long-standing protocols of equal justice under the law paled in comparison to the damage that Trump supposedly would or did do; and three, their conservative opposition either lacked the wherewithal, the brains, or the audacity to emulate such behavior and thus there was no worry anyone would dare do to them what they did to others.

And now? For the first time, given recent polls, the Left is scared that a Republican House and perhaps soon a Republican Senate and White House might follow its own precedents, and use new leftwing guidelines to enact conservative agendas.

Why Democrats’ Get-Trump Crusade Will End In Disappointment, Not Delight
BY: TOM CRIST
AUGUST 18, 2023
5 MIN READ

Depression will set in when Trump, even if convicted of something, lives free for the rest of his life while his appeals against the bogus convictions succeed one at a time.

The Democrat Party has indicted former President Donald Trump again, this time on the craziest charges yet, and the unrestrainedly giddy l*****ts should prepare for another gut-wrenching letdown. Even the perp walk they desire so badly will fail to satisfy them.

There is no realistic way that Trump's disagreement with e******n results can be considered racketeering, especially when countless Democrats did the same thing after every p**********l e******n won by a Republican in the past two decades. Democrat Stacey Abrams can claim to be the rightful governor of Georgia for years with no repercussions. But Trump has been indicted in the same state for asking the state’s officials to comb the e******n centers for uncounted v**es. The hypocrisy is demented.

Trump faces nearly 100 criminal counts in several courts in multiple states. This is a coordinated barrage with suspect timing. Whenever the corruption investigation inches closer to President Joe Biden, the Democrats indict Trump the next day to send a signal: Leave our guy alone, or we will raise the stakes on your guy. Or at least it appears that way to many people.

Team Trump calls this “lawfare,” a form of t***sparent and ill-intentioned e******n i**********e. It is possible Trump’s team will wade through the scattergun allegations, make successful preemptive legal strikes, and convince courts to declare many of these charges defective. But he will need an unprecedented running of the defensive table to avoid getting nailed for something, especially considering the venues of these cases: all blue strongholds.

If he is convinced of a crime, especially one the Democrat leaders also regularly commit, and he goes to prison, the left will be orgasmic. Their lives will be complete, but will their quality of life really improve?

Will getting Trump an inmate number make Hillary Clinton president? Will it take one criminal off the street in New York City, Chicago, or San Francisco? Will it convince one fleeing employer to move back to those cities? Will it improve our position in the world? Will it make groceries affordable for Americans, secure our border, or free our citizens from f******l? The answers are all “no.” The goal is not to improve anything. It is to get Trump. That sets the Democrats up for disappointment.

Depression will set in when Trump, even if convicted of something, lives free for the rest of his long life while his appeals against the bogus convictions succeed one at a time. Democrats will say the judicial system is r****d against them. They will blame Justice Clarence Thomas. Do they really think a former president will go to prison for minor process crimes? The First Amendment wrecks most of these charges without breaking a sweat.

No matter how many politicians and networks say otherwise, Trump has not been charged with s******n or i**********n. Democrat operatives have indicted him for having a big mouth and refusing to admit defeat. His state of mind and the prosecutors’ disparate treatment of others who acted similarly will be front and center at his trials and in the court of public opinion.

Trump will ask why Clinton can mishandle secret documents and willfully destroy evidence, but Trump faces criminal prosecution for his classified documents. Why can Biden scatter classified documents all over his houses and Chinatown, but Trump cannot have materials at his home? Why can Democrat senators and congressmen make calls to arms that resulted in, or at least supported, deadly r**ts all over our country and hold up the First Amendment as a complete defense, but Trump cannot?

Why can Clinton author a book and go on a promotional tour claiming Trump stole her presidency, but Trump cannot call an e******n r****d? Clinton, one of the least popular p**********l candidates ever, will be on trial by analogy.

The same people pushing Trump’s prosecution will go to shocking lengths to protect Biden and his family. They tell us Biden was in the dark about alleged family bribes until that is repeatedly exposed as a lie. Then, once caught, they admit he attended meetings with his son and foreign oligarchs that lined up with receipts of those bribes, but say he was only discussing the weather. Now, Biden’s counsel says no paper trail will directly link the bribes to Biden. Also, Biden is a great dad and should just be left alone.

When the Biden family crumbles and the Democrats say, “OK, OK. Just let Joe retire in peace. He’s a good man. He has experienced loss. He does not understand all of this and was just taking bribes to help his son get on his feet,” the answer must be, “No, it’s too late for any of that. You should not have started this.” When hypocrisy of this degree runs headlong into reality, those involved must pay the piper.

Imagine if more than half of the American public sees Biden circling the drains of job performance and mental fitness and decides to elect Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or another Republican who would retaliate against the left’s lawfare. Think of the unemployment lines in Washington, D.C. Bureaucrats will stand up, put their desk materials in a box, and receive their indictment from a smiling special counsel on their way out the door to the metro.

Whether Trump wins or loses in 2024, the Democrat Party will not see him executed, lashed, or imprisoned for life. They’ll be let down.

Thomas Crist is a husband, father, lawyer, and political conservative who loves his country and despises all myopic hypocrisy regardless of its source.

They exist on both the far extreme left as well as the far extreme right. They think they know better than everyone else, that they have the RIGHT to impose their will, and they are willing to force their opinions on the rest of us with violence and complete disregard to our Constitutional rights.
They exist as private citizens, government bureaucrats and officials, and some even hold elected office. Those on the left think Trump is such a person, and many of us on the right are convinced Biden and the Democrat leadership are such people. IMHO such people are welcomed and embraced by the left, but there are most certainly some on the right as well.
Such people most be faced and condemned WHEREVER they show their dangerous threatening faces.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-woman-charged-threatening-k**l-federal-judge-overseeing-e******n-case-trump-affidavit

Texas woman charged after threatening to k**l federal judge overseeing e******n case against Trump