Axios reported on Sunday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Congress that appeared to threaten impeachment proceedings against Trump. “If the Administration persists in blocking this whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a serious possible breach of constitutional duties by the President, they will be entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation,” Pelosi wrote.
According to Axios, it is likely that the “new stage of investigation” Pelosi referred to is impeachment. Pelosi has generally tried to cool down impeachment talk, and this whistleblower “scandal” doesn’t appear to be the hill to die on with regard to impeachment. President Trump has already said he’s considering releasing the transcript of the call in question, which we know the so-called whistleblower didn’t actually hear. Vadym Prystaiko, the foreign minister of Ukraine, who is familiar with the conversation in question, also denies that U.S. President Donald Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Why would Nancy Pelosi, who has basically refused to entertain calls for impeachment from with her party thus far, suddenly embrace it based such a flimsy story, and a phone call she doesn’t know the details about, and all available information suggests is being overblown? Perhaps this a distraction from the increasingly obvious fact that Joe Biden knows this Ukraine story is a problem for him and his campaign and that he actually lied about whether he’d discussed his son Hunter’s business dealings with Ukraine while he was vice president.
Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to impeach Trump, so threatening impeachment over this phony scandal seems like a risky move. Many in her party were talking impeachment before Trump even took office, and won’t rest until it happens. Little by little, more House Democrats are being persuaded to support impeachment because that’s what their voters want. Impeachment is doomed to fail, and will only result in motivating Trump supporters before the 2020 election. But, with Joe Biden being the Democrat frontrunner and quite possibly their party’s best chance to defeat Trump having his dirty Ukranian laundry being aired out as a result of the story, the best possible distraction from the Biden controversy might just be impeachment—which is a huge problem for Democrats.
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