By Robert Weiner and Ben Lasky
Message to Democrats: Quit buying into political fear of Impeachment hearings -- The politics of truth is a winning Formula, and the media will cover the hearings' substance. In the hearings, if done right, which will be the case because the controlling majority members and especially their majority staff are professional, substantive points will be made by witnesses like Mueller who can simply be asked to read from the report., which he said would be his testimony. He will be taken seriously because the House has the power and authority as the official body to conduct the event. The media will cover the substantive points.
Enough already with members asserting, "We're headed there," "Inevitable," "We're doing investigations," "We're gathering the facts."
Have Mueller -- who will accept a subpoena now as a private person who took pride in saying, "No one told me whether to testify" -- and who said any testimony would be within the Report-- list the 14 obstruction points in Volume Two. Have him read from the list of 120 Russian meetings by Trump campaign, transition, and White House officials. Have him read the discussions of the Oval Office meeting with the President joking -- with no U.S. media present-- about no longer having to worry about Comey, and have Mueller read the Air Force One conversations confirming the President drafting the lie of the Trump Tower meeting talking about adoptions rather than Hillary Clinton. Have the Special Counsel read about the President's many witness interferences as obstructions. Have the Special Counsel read about the private meetings with Putin and them the quote from Putin responding in a news conference when asked if he wanted Trump to win and if Putin asked officials to help, and he said leaving no doubt, "Yes I did. Yes I did."
Mueller, though reluctant, can be like any witness forced to read the key document points in a hearing. It's powerful and persuasive.
Maybe, at that point, the Fox viewer who just said after seeing Mueller on May 29, "I was surprised there was anything bad about Trump in the Mueller report," will no longer be surprised, as will others like her.
And maybe then, during and after the House hearings, the polling for impeachment, as it did after the Sam Ervin Watergate hearings in the Senate, will rise to a majority.
We disagree with many that the Trump impeachment hearings will backlash, making Trump a victim. People use the Clinton model, but Clinton really was a victim because it turned out it was only about his sex life. Few felt that was justified. The evidence is that Trump is a perpetrator of Russian financial involvement in his businesses and self-centered narcissistic money/emoluments/and obstruction. Clinton never asked staff or anyone else to lie.
America believes Mueller way over Trump in all the polls. Impeachment hearings and procedures could kick off and confirm the substance and points most believe to begin with. The media is anxious for impeachment hearings and will cover them substantively. That will actually help, not hurt, Democrats if their politics is truth. They need not fear pushing to inform the American people of the truth. Democrats must remember that that as Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is...fear itself nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Assistant House Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said and confirmed to us in a conversation that lawmakers would go home for Memorial Day week, listen to constituents, come back, and make a decision. They return over the next few days. The future is now.
Now that Mueller has said the Constitution requires the alternate method of congressional action to control Presidential abuses and crimes, and he added that if he could have cleared the President of crimes he would have, the choice of what course of action is clear.
