The assistant editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page asserts that Robert Mueller’s testimony Wednesday regarding his investigation into the now-discredited criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia leaves Democrats having to face the reality that “the impeachment dream is dead.”
“House Democrats hoped that Wednesday’s hearings would allow them to highlight their favorite portions of the Mueller report for people who haven’t read it,” James Freeman observed after former special counsel Mueller testified before the House’s Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.
“Democrats didn’t expect this segment of Americans to include the author,” he quipped, noting that Mueller “seemed strangely unfamiliar” with his own report.
Without mincing any words, Freeman articulated clearly what others have observed as well, and then he suggested Democrats lay the blame for the disaster at the feet of House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (NY):
The impeachment dream is dead, and nobody has more explaining to do at the next meeting of the House Democratic caucus than Judiciary committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York. In 2017 he asked his colleagues to entrust him with one job.
In a previous column, Freeman noted the New York Times had described Nadler’s “bold pitch” for entrusting him with the job of bringing impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump after former Rep. John Conyers, Jr. had resigned.
In light of the demise of the impeachment dream as a result of the hearings, Freeman wrote Democrats “will now have to persuade voters – not just Congressional colleagues – to dump Mr. Trump.”
“How refreshing that even a group of political actors casting themselves as a ‘resistance’ still has to use the constitutional process in America if they wish to remove a President from office,” he concluded.