Appearing Saturday on the Fox News Channel, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and network contributor Andrew McCarthy said the House Democrats could continue their impeachment investigation even if the Senate acquits President Donald Trump.
A partial transcript is as follows:
ED HENRY: There’s obviously the political question of why the Democrats want to delay this past the State of the Union — maybe deny the president the official acquittal, so he could walk into that House chamber triumphantly. He’ll still undoubtedly try to do so because he knows the acquittal is likely, but beyond the politics, the actual legal question coming forward [is] Byron York in our last panel was warning about the possibility of more mischief. You know as a former U.S. attorney that when the cases is over, it’s over. But in this case, if there’s still some procedure to move and there’s the potential for another bombshell from the Bolton book or something else, should the president be concerned this is still not done?
ANDREW MCCARTHY: I think he should be concerned about that anyway. Even if we get out of the four corners of this Senate trial, that doesn’t mean that the House impeachment investigation is over. And to my mind, what this has always been about, since they never really had a realistic idea of removing the president, has been the politics of 2020. As long as they think that they can bruise Trump up so that — their goal is to make him unelectable in the stretch run of the campaign — as long as that’s a possibility, sure there can be all kinds of stuff between now and then.