Nothing in the Impeachment Hearings Will Change Anyone’s Minds


Published November 15, 2019

The Washington Post

Week one of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings is over. The evidence produced so far will do nothing to change Republican support for President Trump.

This conclusion will surely outrage many readers. I can hear them already: “Don’t Republicans have any decency, any regard for the office?” Yes, we do. But we also can see when the fix is in and, boy, is it ever in for Trump.

There’s a saying among lawyers that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he or she wants to. That’s what we have here: a Democratic majority so driven by hatred for Trump that it will indict him (and that’s what impeachment is, an indictment) on anything it can hang its hat onto. That’s also why we have a presiding officer, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), whose opening and closing statements each day show he has already decided Trump should go. They are like Captain Renault from the movie “Casablanca,” who tried to decide whether a suspect in his custody died from suicide or while trying to escape.

Click here to read the rest of this piece at the Washington Post’s website.

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.


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