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Anti-Trump New York Times Columnist: Pelosi Withholding Impeachment Articles ‘Very Risky’

   DailyWire.com
Policital commentator David Brooks speaks on stage at Income Inequality with David Brooks, Jacob Hacker, and Nelini Stamp Moderated by George Packer at the MasterCard stage at SVA Theatre during The New Yorker Festival 2014 on October 19, 2014 in New York City.
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for The New Yorker

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who is a regular critic of President Donald Trump, said during the most recent episode of “PBS NewsHour” that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s apparent decision to withhold articles of impeachment was a “very risky” move for her because she does not have any leverage over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Before he weighed in on Pelosi’s decision to withhold articles of impeachment from the Senate, Brooks commented on the entire impeachment process, noting that Republicans did not use their best defense: that Trump’s actions did not rise to the level of impeachment and that the new bar that Democrats set for impeachment would mean nearly every president could be impeached.

“I sort of wish we had had — that Republicans had put up what I think is their best case, which was that this doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment,” Brooks said. “They can’t make the case it didn’t happen. But they could make a case it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment.”

“Or they could make the case that, if we set this standard, pretty much every president is going to come under impeachment for this,” Brooks continued. “They could go back in history, Iran-Contra, and they could say, look, every president messes up in some very serious way — almost every president, many presidents. And if we set this standard, we will be just impeaching people for years and years.”

Brooks added, “I don’t think Lyndon Johnson, if it — was he held to this kind of standard? You don’t — I think you could go down the list and find a lot of presidents who would be impeached. I think that’s their best argument.”

Later, when asked by host Judy Woodruff about Pelosi’s move to hold back articles of impeachment from the Senate, Brooks said, “I think it’s very risky.”

“As Mitch McConnell said, ‘why is withholding something I don’t want to do, why is that leverage?'” Brooks said. “And so it was always going to be a reality that, once the House voted to impeach, they were going to lose control of the process.”

“And they have essentially lost control of the process. That was just — that’s just baked into the Republican Senate majority,” Brooks continued. “And so they can try to use withholding to impeach — to sort of leverage over McConnell. I don’t think it’s very powerful leverage.”

“I think it delays what eventually will be a trial, pushing it, frankly, back into primary season. And it looks — makes it look a little more political,” Brooks concluded. “So I get the frustration. We don’t want to hand this to a process that we don’t like. But I think it’s very risky to withhold.”

Harvard legal scholar Noah Feldman, who was one of the Democrats’ top witnesses in their impeachment hearings against Trump, said late last week in an op-ed that if Pelosi withholds the articles of impeachment from the Senate then that means that Trump will have never been impeached.

Judge Ken Starr, who presided over the investigation that ultimately led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, said on Saturday that the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump was a “phony impeachment” and that it will go in the history books with a “footnote” or an “asterisk” next to it.

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