WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th February, 2020) US President Donald Trump was acquitted in his impeachment trial because the Democrats built a case on absurd charges, perhaps intentionally, while ignoring actual instances of criminal activity, analysts told Sputnik.
On Wednesday, the Republican-majority Senate voted along partisan lines to acquit Trump of impeachment charges, ending a grueling five-month process.
The Senate failed to reach the 67-vote two-thirds majority needed to remove the president from office on either of the two articles of impeachment the Democratic-controlled Housed lodged against him in December.
The vote was, for the most part, an entirely partisan affair. Republican Senator Mitt Romney was the only member of the upper chamber to defy his party by voting guilty on article one, charging Trump with abuse of power. However, Romney joined his other 52 colleagues in voting not guilty on article number 2, which accused Trump of obstruction of Congress.
The Democrats based the abuse of power charges on allegations that Trump froze aid to Ukraine to persuade Kiev to probe political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter's business dealings.
Historian and antiwar activist David Swanson told Sputnik the Democrats were bound to fail because they failed to tackle Trump's truly serious public record of abuse of power and focused narrowly instead on alleged incidents in which different witnesses had contradicted each other's accounts,
"The case was intentionally weak by leaving out indisputable public acts... and using instead something that required dueling witnesses," Swans said.
Swanson slammed the Democrats for instead of looking at actual crimes, trying to impeach and remove Trump for "delaying a gift of money to Ukraine to buy US weapons."
The Democrats totally ignored several obvious instances of abuse of power, Swanson claimed.
"Launching the endless wars, imprisoning without trial, torturing, mass warrantless spying, secret laws, signing statements, domestic use of the military, and dozens of other outrages just don't measure up to bribing Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden - who himself publicly brags about bribing Ukraine for other purposes. Or so Congress would have us believe," Swanson said.
Trump, he added, has also publicly threatened nuclear war on two countries, waged and escalated numerous illegal wars and dramatically increased the drone murder program.
Congress sits on indisputable evidence "of the greatest crimes while impeaching presidents for lesser offenses that are harder to prove," he said.
Swanson pointed out that in the 1990s then-president Bill Clinton launched illegal wars but was impeached for lying. In 1868, Andrew Johnson was impeached for firing somebody but not repressing African Americans.
Swanson also mocked the notion that the public was supposed to believe that recent Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and nearly every previous US leader did not commit impeachable offenses.
"Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush, not one of which interested [then-House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, even though polls found a majority of the US public supported an impeachment that wasn't even happening," he said.
Swanson refuted the notion that impeachment has been overused. Because of the bungled process applied against Trump, impeachment will be made to look weak and useless and discredited for future use, Swanson predicted.
Democrats have been accused of hypocrisy considering President Barack Obama sternly opposed sending lethal aid to Ukraine. Now, suddenly, delaying such aid to Kiev is a national emergency.
Former foreign policy adviser to Senate Republican leaders Jim Jatras agreed that the impeachment process had failed because the Democrats had focused on accusing the president of an obscure, alleged crime they did not even have any strong evidence or witnesses to substantiate.
"The short answer is that there was nothing there. Even hyping the Ukraine/good, Russia/bad meme - to which virtually all [Republican] Senators subscribe - was insufficient to overcome Trump's popularity with the Republican voter base," Jatras told Sputnik.
The Democrats' impeachment strategy contained at least two fatal weaknesses, Jatras pointed out.
"First, the idea that the United States doesn't use assistance money to extort behavior from client governments, literally, all the time, doesn't pass the laugh test. Secondly the stink of corruption around Ukraine and the Bidens was too overwhelming to ignore," he said.
Independent Institute Center for Peace and Freedom Director Ivan Eland told Sputnik that the Democrats had failed to pursue Trump's violations of the Federal bribery statute, the Hobbs extortion act, campaign finance laws and the Impound Control Act.
However, the failure of the impeachment process was likely to have little longer-term political impact because Americans were so firmly and clearly divided into two conflicting political camps, Jatras stated.
"Actually, I don't think it will make much difference. Americans' feet are locked in concrete in their respective political camps. The impeachment fiasco will just harden their mutual hatred, for which Trump is a Rorschach blot," Jatras said.
Trump's acquittal would n do nothing break the deadlock over passing any significant reform or other needed measures in Congress, Jatras warned.
"We've long since reached the point of almost total gridlock," he said.
Jatras also noted that the one area where Republicans and Democrats still appeared to strongly agree and push for unified actions was for international aggression and hostile US policies towards Venezuela and Iran, as well as towards other countries.
"It is noteworthy though that during the State of the Union among the few times... Democrats stood and applauded were when Trump recognized [Venezuelan opposition politician] Juan Guaido and touted the assassination of [Iranian Quds Force Commander Major General Qasem] Soleimani," he said.
Eland agreed that the impeachment would quickly fade in the US public consciousness.
"It may have given Trump a slight bump in the polls now but will have likely been forgotten nine months from now in the election," Eland said.
However, the entire process may also serve over time to deepen voters' sense that Trump was a corrupt politician, Eland concluded.
