Ruddy: The Greatest Ruse in History — Trump's Impeachment

The Senate is on the verge of a verdict in the impeachment trial of President Donald John Trump.

Just four months after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her “impeachment inquiry” we have learned really nothing new.

The “facts” of the case have not changed.

The president wanted the Ukraine to investigate its actions during the 2016 U.S. election.
Secondly, he asked for an inquiry into Joe Biden’s efforts to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor who was purportedly seeking to uncover corruption.

After months of impeachment hearings and now arguments in the Senate trial, we are still at the first point.

No crime was ever committed. And the Democrats, in their impeachment articles and trial arguments, have failed to identify any.

The president has called the impeachment inquiry a “hoax.”

I believe it is, indeed, the great ruse in our country’s history.

The ruse has become increasingly obvious to many.

Unable to beat Donald Trump in November’s election, the Democrats needed to attempt to tarnish the president with a whiff of scandal, at the least.

Their impeachment claim is that the president has abused the power of his office – a charge so nebulous that their own House managers have been unable to define it.

While I agree with a recent National Review editorial that a president can be impeached for abuse of power, nothing in this case rises to the standards that our founding fathers set forth in the Constitution for impeachment.

Here are some of my observations:

1. We now have a good idea why Nancy Pelosi delayed transmission of the impeachment articles. The Democrats were busy burnishing their presentations for the Senate trial. They made well-polished arguments complete with exhibits, videos and charts. These had to have taken weeks to prepare. So the Democrats get an A-plus for style, but an F for substance.
2. The media sideshow about the Lev Parnas tapes and photographs. The press has been playing these up, but at the end of the day it’s all smoke. There is no evidence the president or his aides committed any crime. And if these tapes and pictures are so vital, why did the Democrats not make them part of their impeachment proceedings?
3. Despite a blizzard of stories about Rudy Giuliani and his partners Parnas and Furman, there is still no evidence that any of these individuals committed any crime as it relates to Ukraine.
4. Trump’s defense team has so far made a strong defense. The House Democrats presented the Senate a stillborn case. They rammed through an impeachment in record time, flouting rules and conventions to deny the president and his congressional allies due process.
5. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans should be commended for the dignified way they have conducted the trial. The Senate agreed to three days of arguments for each side, and the full transmittal of House evidence to the trial. House Democrats have been given equal time and full access to multimedia to make their case. This is the way Congress should conduct business.
6. The American people are the ultimate jurors. Poll data at RealClearPolitics continues to show the president’s approval is as high as ever, and support for removal is actually waning. For example, the ABC News poll out this past weekend shows the president at 47 percent approval, and support for removal having fallen to just 45 percent.
7. Perhaps undermining the Democrats credibility is that they cried wolf way too often against the president. Two years of federal and Congressional probes, and the Mueller probe with 500 witnesses and $50 million spent, no evidence was uncovered showing the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Still, this didn’t stop the Democrats for the past year claiming Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice. (A claim, funny enough, that never saw daylight in the articles of impeachment.)

I have said from the beginning it was perfectly fair for the Democrats to criticize and question the President about his actions. That’s what our democracy is about.

But the immediate opening of an impeachment inquiry, the unprecedented close-out of Republican voices, the rush to judgment without having heard from key witnesses — all of this effectively aborted the Democrats’ main claim that the president committed an impeachable crime.

“They’re here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone said in the Senate Saturday. “And we can’t allow that to happen.”

He’s right.

The place for the adjudication of this case is at the ballot box this November, not on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Christopher Ruddy is CEO of Newsmax, one of the country's leading conservative news outlets. Read more Christopher Ruddy Insider articles — Click Here Now.