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FACT: House Democrats have Trump dead-to-rights on the impeachable offense of obstruction and they know it. All the delay is to gather counterintelligence evidence, additional evidence of conspiracy, and bribery/money laundering evidence. Democrats think delays help them do this.
1/ I did an HBO pre-interview in early April, before the Mueller Report came out but after the Barr Letter had woefully miscast it, and I was asked if I *really* believed Trump would be impeached. It was a moment when many were saying "no." I said yes, and I'll be proven correct.
2/ The reason I knew it would be a "yes" is the obstruction case was/is a slam dunk and with ten instances and the eye of history on Democrats the pressure would finally be too much not to do the right thing. So I have since early 2018 taken impeachment—not conviction—as a given.
3/ So we have to ask, why is there such a delay if no new obstruction evidence is forthcoming or necessary, what we have now is a slam dunk, and Democrats feel a moral obligation to do their jobs? It's because no one believes obstruction is the end of this. In fact, they know it.
4/ I'll admit that many days I'm frustrated that Democrats won't move forward with impeachment when the case for it is airtight. But on other days I think to myself that this artificial delay is an ingenious stalling tactic to gain time to marshal robust evidence of other crimes.
5/ The counterintelligence report will reveal impeachable offenses. Trump's tax returns will reveal impeachable offenses. A full congressional investigation of the facts Mueller uncovered reveals bribery, aiding and abetting and a conspiracy with Russia to commit election crimes.
6/ So I'd ask people to engage in an intellectual exercise: imagine for a moment Democrats have, in bulk, always known they were going to impeach Trump *because* the evidence of obstruction is overwhelming. Wouldn't this artificial delay of the inevitable *strengthen* their hand?
7/ Imagine Democrats properly impeaching Trump for obstruction, an impeachable offense, only to learn Republicans have successfully convinced the country not to care about obstruction, and not to visit any consequences on a party that doesn't impeach a president for obstruction?
8/ You may say Republicans won't impeach this president on ANY grounds. Even if you believe so, wouldn't Democratic voters' rage and the calumny of independents fall more heavily on the GOP in 2020 if they've ignored bribery, money laundering, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy?
9/ So if we think deductively and start from the presumption of impeachment and a desire to energize Democratic voters and reveal to independents how disgusting the Republican establishment has become, wouldn't Democrats try to stall to gather more evidence for a few more months?
10/ I don't like to talk/think about byzantine, sub rosa horse-race-oriented pre-election strategies that selected political leaders could have adopted or might be adopting. That's fruitless. I just think Pelosi knows impeachment is a *when*, not an if, and is acting accordingly.
PS/ Part of this is simply me watching Pelosi's pressers and noticing like everyone that her diction on impeachment has changed. She now treats impeachment as an inevitability, if you follow her grammar and diction and tone closely. Working back from there gets me to this thread.
NOTE/ Sorry, just realized many may not know that what I'm responding to in this thread: the breaking news that Judiciary Democrats have indicated to US media that they're now *effectively* in the midst of an impeachment inquiry. I see this news as part of this thread's argument.
CITE/ This breaking news is now all over the interwebs, of course, but I'll let the nation's top constitutional law scholar, Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, do the honors for this feed at least:
