Some idle thoughts on impeachment this Saturday morning [View all]

[EarlG]

I've read a couple of stories recently about Dems either wanting to impeach Trump, or getting gunshy about impeaching Trump. To me, these stories seem like a trap.

First, this framing forces a narrative where Dems are either:

1) Pro-impeachment radical leftists with Trump Derangement Syndrome who would rather attack the president than pass bills to improve people's lives (which annoys moderates/independents), or...

2) Anti-impeachment wishy-washy milquetoasts who are fine ignoring the multitude of crimes committed by the Trump administration because they would rather suck up to moderates/independents than do the right thing (which annoys the liberal base of the party).

This narrative gives Democrats no room to maneuver, and allows for easy wedge-driving by Republican politicians, pundits, and of course all the foreign troll bots that flood social media services. The narrative is clear: either we do the radical leftist thing and impeach, only to (potentially) suffer "voter backlash" from moderates/independents, or we do the "spineless Dems" act and don't impeach, and (potentially) turn off lots of liberal base voters.

So how about an alternative approach?

It's clear to sane people that Trump is practically committing an impeachable offense per day at this point. Just this morning I read an article about how he is essentially selling pardons to criminals for $1 million per pardon. And that's just the latest in a string of outrageous offenses.

If/when Democrats retake the House this year, real investigations can start up again in earnest. Congress is supposed to provide oversight of the executive branch, and clearly that has not been happening since Trump was re-elected. Democrats will have an extremely strong mandate to do this, especially because mid-term elections are often about voters wanting the opposition party to act as a check against the party in power.

But it's also more than clear that impeachment itself is a dead end. Democrats already impeached Trump twice -- for good reason -- during his first term. In both cases the Senate failed to convict him. If they wouldn't convict him for January 6, there's no reason to think they would convict him now. He's shown that he wants to be an authoritarian dictator, and Republicans in the Senate have shown that they're fine with it.

There are other downsides to impeachment too. Last time around, Democrats impeached Trump quickly. The first impeachment took six weeks, the second took four weeks (Trump left office during the second impeachment). At the time, Democrats chose to focus on a handful of impeachable offenses, instead of taking a broader view. This meant that the trials were over and done with quickly, and the public moved on once it was clear that Trump had been acquitted.

I don't think it's a good idea to try the same thing again. I would not want to see a watered-down impeachment trial where Democrats decide once again, "Okay, these are the handful things we can DEFINITELY nail him on, so let's have a narrow focus and ignore the smaller stuff so we have a greater chance of success." Given that the Senate will absolutely fail to convict Trump, the chance of success is zero no matter what happens. This means that focusing on a few of the worst crimes will end up giving Trump the opportunity to exonerate himself on those crimes, and then simply sweep everything else under the rug. We've seen that movie before.

Then what to do?

If Democrats win the House, rather than coming up with a few reasons to impeach and then holding an impeachment trial, instead they should form an Impeachment Committee that is tasked with conducting a sweeping investigation to determine whether Donald Trump should be impeached, and if so, what for.

The job of this committee is not really to get us to a point where we actually impeach Trump. Instead, the point is to hold constant investigations of all the different unconstitutional actions that Trump could be impeached for. Start with DOGE and the illegal firings of federal workers, and look into what happened to all the confidential government data that Elon Musk and Big Balls walked away with, and move forward from there. Sending the military into the streets. Locking people up without due process. Sending legal immigrants to torture prisons against court orders. Demolishing the East Wing. Selling pardons. Politicizing the DOJ and ordering the prosecution of political opponents. Sending Venezuelan oil money to a bank account in Qatar. Failing to release the Epstein files. There is practically an unlimited supply of material, since the vast majority of things Trump has done in the past year have been unconstitutional and impeachable.

Televise these hearings daily -- take public testimony from star witnesses, and make a show of it. And make sure that each one is wrapped up fairly quickly -- say, within a week or two. Then as each mini-investigation is completed, release a report with all the evidence that says, "Here's something Trump could clearly be impeached for, and here are the receipts. We're adding this to the list of things to impeach Trump for."

And then just keep doing this, day after day, week after week. The idea is to set up a narrative similar to the Epstein narrative that is driving Republicans nuts at the moment -- they can't release the files because of what's in them, but by not releasing them they make people far more interested in what might be in them. Similarly, the job of the Impeachment Committee would be to maintain the narrative that impeachment is always looming just over the horizon, but before we can get there, we need to do another full investigation into yet another serious Trump crime.

Trump has benefitted politically from the fact that he has engaged in so much criminality and corruption, it's simply hard for people to get their heads around. We need to flip this on its head to politically devastate and cripple both Trump and the GOP in return. We already know that actually impeaching him will NEVER result in his removal, and would likely even end up as a political net negative for us. Instead, we use the Impeachment Committee to refocus the relatively short attention spans of Americans on a specific Trump crime, show how it is impeachable, then a week later move on to a different crime. Encourage popular podcasters to treat it like a crime drama with a new episode each week. If the media starts asking, "Are you ever going to impeach Trump?" reply, "We need to get to the bottom of all his crimes first! Don't you want us to gather all the evidence before proceeding?"

Without ever having to actually hold an impeachment trial, this could cement in people's minds that Trump is basically running a criminal operation out of the White House, and that he 100% should be impeached, even if an actual trial never happens. In addition, anyone who is still on board with Trump as all these crimes are exposed will be essentially aiding and abetting him, and the narrative will be that upstanding Americans need to drain that swamp at the earliest possible opportunity. Combined with a broad corruption reform campaign from Democrats, this could make life very difficult for Republicans going into 2028.

And while we're running up to the mid-terms this year, whenever media figures try to press Dems on, "Are you going to impeach Trump or not?" -- just so they can drive that wedge in our party -- Dems can sidestep the question with a united response: "We're definitely going to investigate all of Trump's crimes to determine whether impeachment is merited."