by Frank Holmes reporter
A Democrat has just made impeachment history—but not in a way he ever wanted to.
Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, D-F.L., became the first politician in U.S. history to vote for the impeachment of a president even though Hastings had been impeached, found guilty, and removed from office in the late 1980s.
And the left-wing Democrat admitted the entire impeachment effort is “political as Hell”… but he’d vote to impeach President Donald Trump, anyway.
Hastings got thrown off the bench after he was accused of taking a $150,000 bribe to go easy on two mob-connected defendants while a federal judge.
Federal agents say Hastings had already received $25,000 when they busted a bag man delivering the rest of the take.
Congress decided to toss him off the 11th circuit court and filed 17 articles of impeachment against him—more charges than ever lodged against any politician in U.S. history!
Hastings said the 1989 impeachment was a racist plot and “with the help of our Lord,” he’d “put this Mickey Mouse horror show behind me.”
But the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives impeached him by an overwhelming 413-3 margin.
And the Democrat-controlled Senate voted to remove him from office—but Hastings still wouldn’t go away.
He lost two Florida races in three years. But in 1992, he got elected to Congress in a safe Democratic district—after calling his primary opponent, a Jewish woman, a “racist bitch.”
Bill Clinton’s popularity helped him get a seat in the body that impeached him three years earlier—and Hastings returned the favor when Clinton got impeached for perjury, voting against impeaching his fellow Democrat.
But Hastings faced allegations of corruption at his new job, too.
U.S. taxpayers paid $220,000 to a former Hastings staffer named Winsome Packer to settle her sexual harassment allegations against the congressman.
Hastings paid convicted money launderer Dona Nichols-Jones almost $75,000 to work a part-time job as an office aide.
He’s publicly told a “joke” about President Donald Trump dying.
And the 83-year-old is currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, because he hired his girlfriend, Pamela Williams, and paid her a whopping $168,411 a year—possibly violating a House rule against having sexual relations with a staffer. That’s almost as much as members of Congress, who rake in $174,000.
Despite bringing home more than $300,000 between him and his girlfriend, Hastings still owes as much as $7 million in fees for his 31-year-old impeachment defense, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Even though he’d bee throw out of office, Hastings had no problem voting to impeach two other federal judges: Texas judge Samuel Kent and G. Thomas Porteus.
Now he says Trump is the one who “has degraded and debased” his office.
“We know that the inspector general for the intelligence community notified Congress of a ‘credible; and ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint related to President Trump’s phone conversation” with the president of Ukraine. “This continued insistence on undermining our democracy must be met with the full force and strength possessed by the United States Congress as set forth by our founding fathers in the Constitution, up to and including, Articles of Impeachment.”
He ended up voting for Trump’s impeachment—which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still refuses to send to the Senate for a trial.
Even the liberal news outlet NPR blasted Hastings’ hypocrisy.
“Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., is among the 19 federal officials in American history who have been impeached by the House of Representatives,” the radio network stated. “Now, he wants to cast a vote to impeach No. 20: President Trump.”
But politics—even impeachment—isn’t about who’s guilty or innocent—and Alcee Hastings let the cat out of the bag in a recent interview with The Palm Beach Post.
“Impeachment is as partisan as Hell,” he said.
For once, you can take a Democrat at his word.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”