House Democrats have yet to garner support from Congressional Republicans for their currently ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump — but they’re getting there. This week in an interview that aired on Axios on HBO, none other than Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) insisted that he’d be open to supporting Trump’s impeachment if he saw convincing evidence of a crime. Now, whether Graham as a fervent Trump supporter would admit to the existence of a mountain of papers right in front of him marked “Evidence of Trump Crimes” is a different story, but this is a start!
He explained:
‘I mean, show me something that is a crime. If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.’
As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham would be one of the leaders of handling the impeachment case against the president should House Dems decide to bring articles of impeachment forward for a full floor vote and approve them.
They have launched their inquiry following revelations that Trump sought to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens in the July phone call that Graham is referring to. Democrats have alleged that there was a “quid pro quo” since Trump had previously abruptly paused aid to Ukraine while pushing for this dirt, but Trump and his cronies have whipped out an array of other excuses for halting that aid that have for now, given Republican leaders something to cling to as well.
Even those excuses have already been falling apart, however. Standing before the press the other day, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney blatantly admitted that a debunked conspiracy theory Trump wanted Zelensky to look into about Democratic emails ending up in Ukraine was part of the corruption that the Trump team wanted the country to look into before they’d get any aid. In other words — wait for it — a quid pro quo. (He eventually tried to walk that back.)
There’s also the issue of the recent occasion on which Trump stood outside the White House and proclaimed that Ukraine and China should investigate the Bidens. Graham called that “stupid,” but had an excuse, proclaiming in his Axios appearance:
‘As to asking China to look into Biden — that was stupid. Nobody believes that China would be fair to Biden, Trump, me or you, or anybody. Bad idea… That didn’t last very long. I think that’s a frustrated Trump who feels like there’s two different games, that people in your business are never gonna really sit down and talk to Hunter Biden unless it’s a softball interview.’
Oh, so it’s the media’s fault again — great to see Graham falling in line.
Trump has continued throughout this whole process to insist that he’s done nothing wrong. Instead, he claims, he’s just the victim of “crazed and irrational hostility” or whatever from those in the media and Democrats. Apparently, he just wants them to look away from a president of the United States brazenly using their position to try and gather politically useful dirt on an opponent.
