by Frank Holmes, reporter
Defenders of President Donald Trump have widely condemned the impeachment trial. Because of impeachment, supporters say, Trump has been blocked from enacting his agenda, thrust Congress into gridlock, and paralyzed a divided nation as the process slowly drones on.
Recent polls show that the longer impeachment plays out, the less popular it becomes. Indeed, whispers inside D.C. show Democrats have privately admitted defeat.
Despite this, some lawmakers have warned that they’re ready to start the process all over again.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-C.A., recently stated she’s looking forward to “another impeachment” of Trump after he’s acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
Waters gave voters a preview of her plans during an interview with MSNBC on Sunday.
Waters issued a subpoena for the president to turn over financial records showing his dealings with Germany’s Deutsche Bank last April.
As the head of the House Financial Services Committee, Waters cast the move as part of an alleged investigation into Russian money laundering — but partisans hope they’ll find an elusive “smoking gun” tying Trump to Russian billionaires.
Newsweek asked whether the bank’s loans to Trump, before he ever announced a presidential run, are “evidence of something more sinister — a critical chapter in the president’s long history of suspicious business deals with Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs?”
The Mueller report deflated Democrats’ hopes of finding proof of “collusion” between Trump and Russia, but Democrats still hope the financial documents will uncover embarrassing information about the Trump family.
The president’s lawyers have dismissed the subpoena and say it is an attempt to “harass” the president and “rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage.”
Waters confirmed the last of those suspicions on Sunday.
She told MSNBC she was excited that “the subpoenas that I have issued, that’s (sic.) gone through the lower courts, are now going to be heard at the Supreme Court in March.”
“Whether or not that leads to another impeachment activity, I don’t know,” Waters stated.
Making Trump the first president to be impeached twice may be an irresistible form of revenge for scorned Democrats should they lose the 2020 presidential election.
Waters is not the only Democrat to float the idea of rolling impeachments. Rep. Al Green, D-T.X., also wants to turn impeachment into a regular part of cable news networks’ line-up.
“The Constitution allows a president to be impeached more than once,” Green said in December. “If we impeach now, or at some time in the near future … we can impeach again.”
“There is no limit on the number of times” the House can go through the procedure, Green — who spent two years trying to get Trump impeached the first time — said.
Waters and Green are among the most liberal of the Democrats in the House, but they still have the ear of House leadership.
Even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi signaled that she’s open to Impeachment 2.0 earlier this month.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Pelosi, “You said [President Trump] has violated the constitution again and again. Do you think it’s possible the House may have to file new articles of impeachment?”
Pelosi replied, “Well, let’s just see what the Senate does.”
That threat is very real.
Pelosi’s team laid the legal groundwork for a second-try impeachment late last month.
House counsel Douglas Letter wrote that, if a future witness “produces new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the Articles approved by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly — including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment.”
The Democrats have also enrolled outside legal support to bolster their case. “There is almost certainly NOT a barrier to a second impeachment, even for the exact same conduct,” former Whitewater prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig, told liberal news website Raw Story. House Democrats could initiate “a second impeachment for a different offense,” too, he said.
When it comes to impeachment, Trump is not alone. House Democrats have a full docket.
In addition to a possible rematch after Trump’s inevitable acquittal this year, key House figures have hinted they would also like to remove Vice President Mike Pence and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from office, as well.
Waters promised to overturn the election of our national leaders “one at a time” in September 2018.
“We’ll be ready for Pence. We’ll get him, too,” Waters said.
Meanwhile, former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks told MSNBC she hoped to impeach enough people to make Nancy Pelosi the president.
“You could impeach Pence first,” she said in October. Then, “I think that maybe a deal could be struck where … Nancy Pelosi does become president.”
She said her plan would make sure that “the proper party remains in power.'”
Perhaps the prospect of suing her way into the Oval Office explains Nancy Pelosi’s openness to never-ending rounds of impeachment.
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.”