After engineering an obviously futile resolution among House Democrat to ask Vice President Mike Pence to try to remove the president he’s served for four years. Pelosi announced on Tuesday her selection of nine representatives to serve as impeachment managers to present a case to the Senate against Trump for any role he might have played in last week’s riotous incursion in the nation’s Capitol.
Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat best known lately for his involvement with a spy for communist China, will be among lawmakers named to prosecute a president of the United States, according to Fox News.
It’s difficult to see what point Pelosi could be making with this, beyond proving to half of the country that the impeachment case is a mockery of the political system.
She could even have gone back to her original impeachment team from the doomed 2019-2020 effort — led by the loathsome Reps. Adam Schiff of California and Jerrold Nadler of New York — to take a second stab at stabbing Trump.
As former Rep. Trey Gowdy put it in December when discussing Swalwell’s Intelligence Committee membership: “There are 230 Democrats and you mean to tell me she cannot find a single one that didn’t date a Chinese spy?”
But now, to help lead Congress through what’s supposed to be the most important action it can take short of a declaration of war, Pelosi picks a man who’s more famous for his relations with a Chinese operative than for his abortive run for the presidency in 2019.
It’s an insult to anyone who thinks the American political system — even in its current state — is a process worthy of being treated with respect. And thinks American voters should be treated with respect, too.
This impeachment isn’t a move by conscientious lawmakers to address a constitutional crisis, as the Founders intended. It’s a nakedly political attack on a political enemy at an opportune time.
