Practical Politics
I just finished watching an excruciating, nauseating display of grown, elected people supposedly expert in debating and passing laws to help the American people, literally grovel and grind themselves into pretzels trying to “trick” or otherwise convince a professional attorney from the DOJ into altering or at least adding to his final report on why the DOJ should not charge and prosecute President Joe Biden with criminal conduct for possessing classified governmental materials while he was out of office just as the DOJ was continuing to charge former POTUS Donald Trump with that crime. The exercise was supposedly a public viewing of what has been billed as the House Republicans’ inquiry into whether to charge President Joe Biden with impeachment (because former POTUS Trump had been previously charged —twice, in fact).
As usual, the Republican committee’s attempt failed. The DOJ Special Prosecutor would not comply with the wishes of Republican sycophants and did not change or add to the written report he had turned in. Based on the available evidence in this situation, this result is exactly as it should be. Though very likely the Republicans will narrowly vote to impeach the POTUS anyway, despite the lack of the required cache of real evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors” called for by the U.S. Constitution, the Republicans, as usual, chose to ignore or neglect critical information that did not support their quixotic quest.
The most important piece of evidence that basically defined the situation before the hearing, and still held forth after the committee adjourned, was that even though Mr. Biden did have classified materials in his possession after he was temporarily out of office as Vice President and U.S. Senator, as did former POTUS Trump, when the U.S. government requested that he find and return any classified documents he possessed to the National Archives, Mr. Biden immediately complied. When the U.S. government demanded the same response from Mr. Trump, as a former POTUS, he refused to comply, saying, in effect, that he possessed no such documents.
An official court-ordered search warrant had to be issued and served. Subsequently, it was discovered that Mr. Trump had hidden some of the requested documents so the investigators would not find them (and ordered his attorneys to lie that all documents had been returned), and that he had been recorded improperly displaying some of the classified documents to guests at his Florida home, and discussing the contents of those documents with them.
The differences in the actions of the two men, one the current POTUS and the other a former POTUS, were stark. Trying to gloss over these differences (as they did again during this current hearing) has been a political and public nightmare for Republican acolytes, but they shoulder on.
Mr. Biden never refused to obey the official summons of the federal government to return any classified documents he and his employees found to be in his possession. Mr Trump refuses to do that even today, after being formally charged with committing a federal crime by such refusal ( and even tried to hide a huge cache of the documents and again, instructed his attorneys to lie and say that all documents had been returned).
To repeat, the differences in the actions of the two men are radical, and they constitute why the Republican-led House should not issue impeachment charges against the current POTUS. But, knowing the right thing to do or not do, and doing it, is just the point for this particular group of House Republicans.
It is unfortunate that they are currently our leaders. Political leadership that is consciously unseeing or that willingly leads the public into a blind canyon with no exit, is not proper leadership. It is political heresy—-a state destined to seriously harm the U.S. electorate, including Black folk.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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