Bohlken: House Impeachment Vote Is Lawless

The House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon held a snap impeachment debate and vote that is lawless and based on an obviously false proposition, i.e., that President Trump incited the criminal invasion of the Capitol.  

The impeachment vote is lawless because it is being done without any preceding investigations, hearings, or any due process, such as was granted to President Clinton and all presidents in any attempted impeachment before President Trump. Such due process would have included hearings in the House of Representatives, with the president being represented by counsel and having the right to present and cross-examine witnesses.

If there were such investigations and hearings, the impeachment indictment would be laughed out of Washington, D.C.

We now know that the invasion of the Capitol was obviously planned before President Trump ever spoke on January 6th. The Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said the rioters “came with riot helmets, gas masks, shields, pepper spray, fireworks, climbing gear — climbing gear! — explosives, metal pipes, baseball bats. I have never seen anything like it in 30 years of events in Washington.” 

Are we supposed to believe that the rioters obtained this equipment after hearing Trump speak? 

The Washington Post has now reported that the FBI’s Norfolk, Virginia office was aware before January 6th of plans to attack Congress, including that “Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Antifa slave soldiers being spilled.”

The rioters could not have been “incited” by the president’s speech because it is extremely doubtful that they heard any of it, and they could not have heard more than the first eight minutes.  Chief Sund reported that the assault on the Capitol police began at 12:40 p.m.  According to Bing, it takes 32 minutes to walk from the Ellipse, where the speech was given, to the Capitol. This means the rioters would have had to leave the Ellipse, under ideal conditions and assuming they were ever at the Ellipse, at 12:08 p.m. at the latest.

National Pulse editor Raheem Kassam reported that, given the crowds, it took 45 minutes for that walk to the Capitol area on January 6th. This means the rioters would have had to leave the Ellipse by 11:55 a.m. 

Kassam reported that the president’s speech began at noon. National Public Radio reported that the speech ended at 1:11 p.m. The noon starting time and 1:11 ending time agree with the one hour and eleven-minute length of the speech on the transcript.    

 Even if they had heard the speech, President Trump never called for force, violence, or overthrow of the government. He made only the following comments on the Capitol:

“We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. 

“We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

To remove a President for “incitement,” based on his asking his supporters for a peaceful and patriotic march to the Capitol to “make your voices heard,” would be lawless hypocrisy.  

The president’s critics have ignored his call for a peaceful demonstration. They have quoted, out of context, his statement made not two minutes before the end of his speech, when no rioters could have been there to hear them, that, “And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country.” Just as President Obama stated that Democrats should bring a gun to a knife fight, the president repeatedly used “fight” to refer to “fighting” in the legislatures, courts, elections, and the media. He referred to Jim Jordan fighting in Congress. Did he mean that Jordan was punching his colleagues? Did Obama mean that Democrats should engage in knife fights with Republicans but use a gun to win? 

As for the president controlling the rioters, The Washington Post reported that “4:30: Outside the east side of the Capitol, a man with a megaphone announced to a crowd of hundreds: ‘Hey, everyone, Donald Trump says he wants everyone to go home.’ In response, some in the crowd booed loudly. One man shouted back: ‘Shut the f— up! We’re not going to bend a knee, motherf—–!'”

Alexis de Tocqueville opined that “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”

The impeachment is a lawless and irrational abuse of power.