‘Their actions literally fit their own definition of collusion…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A top GOP senator outlined what likely would be a crucial consideration if House Democrats were to send impeachment charges against President Donald Trump to the upper chamber: their own hypocrisy.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and also—as Senate president pro tempore—is fourth in line for the Oval Office behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
However, Grassley made clear in prepared floor remarks on Tuesday that he had no desire to move a notch or two closer to the presidency as Trump’s opponents investigate his July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In a follow-up to an April speech he made on the need for more consistent congressional oversight practices, Grassley tore into the many examples of Democrats attacking Trump for offenses that they, themselves, egregiously disregarded under their own administrations.
“Their actions literally fit their own definition of collusion,” said Grassley in regards to the use of a foreign agent with Kremlin ties—as well as the aid of corrupt Ukrainian political agents—to smear Trump with now debunked claims that his campaign worked with Russia.
In fact, Grassley outlined multiple counts of hypocrisy and double-standards Democrats exercised in the Russia collusion investigation alone, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.
He also called out Democrats’ inconsistent application of justice and oversight with their latest impeachment bid.
“We’ve heard a lot about whistleblowers in the past several weeks,” Grassley began.
“There’s been an outpouring of concern for whistleblowers ever since word came out that there was a whistleblower complaint that implicates the current administration,” he said. “A lot of those on the other side of the aisle expressing support for whistleblowers, to the best of my recollection, haven’t expressed the same level of concern for whistleblowers in the last administration.”
Grassley pointed out that he had acted in good faith advocating for strong whistleblower protections and even supporting early investigation efforts into Trump.
“I am an equal-opportunity overseer because I seek the facts irrespective of party and no matter where they lead,” he said. “I don’t think many of the Democrats today can say the same”
By contrast, House Democrats have frozen Republicans out of their impeachment investigation by refusing to vote on it, and they have conducted inquiries shrouded in the secrecy of closed-door hearings.
Grassley also pointed to past examples of Democrats—including former President Bill Clinton—explicitly seeking quid pro quo arrangements for political benefit while pointing to the fact that no such requests were evident in the call transcript and whistleblower complaint that Trump had permitted release of.
Grassley called Trump’s consent to release the classified files—knowing that Democrats would use them for blatantly partisan purposes—as “extraordinary acts of transparency.”
That, too, stood in contrast to his political opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, who deleted some 30,000 emails from a private server after receiving a congressional subpoena, and then was granted immunity from the Obama FBI and Justice Department, who further promised to destroy other evidence after conducting their own analysis.
“All of this is clear evidence of alienation of federal records, a federal crime,” Grassley said.
Even Joe Biden, the former vice president and current presidential candidate whom Trump sought to investigate, was guilty of doing the exact same thing by threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the prosecutor investing his son’s company wasn’t fired.
“The Democrats have argued that Trump has tried to get the government of Ukraine to look into this matter to benefit his political campaign,” Grassley said. “Yet, it doesn’t sound like there’s much concern from many on the other side of the aisle about what Biden claimed to have done.”
He criticized the Left’s divisive political maneuvering as a distraction from the business of legislating while they desperately sought to usurp power from a rightfully elected leader.
“Instead of coming together to work for the American people and pass trade deals and legislation that would lower drug costs for seniors, the Democrats choose to gin up false political controversies while ignoring the faults and involvement of their own political leaders,” Grassley said.
In the broader perspective, whether their disgraceful efforts succeeded or failed, he said, Democrats’ partisan wranglings will prove inconsequential.
“Get over yourselves,” Grassley said.
“All of us will be footnotes to footnotes in history,” he continued. “It’s the policies that we leave behind that will matter for future generations, not smear campaigns.”