Burgess Needs to put Constitution & constituents before Trump

Trump and his Republicans toadies 

with Burgess just to his right

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" - Aldous Huxley


So the plan for Michael Burgess and his Republican cohorts in the House and Senate is to attack the impeachment process while ignoring the substance of it.  No one from either Party ever relishes the extreme measures that impeachment calls for.  But to denigrate it’s Constitutional authority as “a sham” is a desperate measure by the GOP that may well relegate them to a level of infamy that mires them for generations.

How did the testimonies of eleven credible State Dept. and NSC officials, under oath, not convince Burgess that president Trump had abused the power of that office?

FACT: Trump has refused Judiciary Chairman Nadler’s invitation for the president or his attorneys to address this tribunal and forbidden pertinent White House staff to respond to House subpoenas who could conceivably speak to his defense.  What innocent person would not take advantage of these opportunities?

FACT: Trump’s own hand-picked ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, testified under oath that there was a quid prop quo, asking Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a favor that entailed a trip to the White House and funds for military arms in exchange for a bogus corruption investigation on Joe Biden, a contrived conspiracy charge originating in right-wing media sources that investigative reporter Jane Mayer laid out in her Oct. 14th New Yorker piece.

I also find it difficult to believe that Burgess’ reservations are based upon anything his Republican colleagues on the Intelligence Committee said or did.  Between ranking member David Nunes and congressional pit bull Jim Jordan, there was little to nothing they did or said outside of impugning the witnesses credibility and planting seeds for another right-wing conspiracy.  FACT: A conspiracy originating from Russian Security Services about Ukraine interfering with our 2016 elections rather than the Kremlin, as attested to by every U.S. intelligence agency.

Perhaps Burgess takes Trump’s word at face value when he repeats the dubious claim that he told Sondland that he “wanted nothing.  I want no quid pro quo.”

FACT: The veracity of this comment is marginalized by the reality that he did so only after a whistle blower exposed this abuse of power and “according to an administration official”, no record on White House switchboard logs exists that shows such a conversation between Trump and Sondland occurred.

The possibility that this was a fabrication of Trump’s doing is not unlikely at all, based on his on-record, prolific lies over the years.  Most recently his denial that he ever sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to press the Ukraine government into opening an investigation into the Bidens.

FACT: This whopper was conveyed in a Bill O’Reilly podcast where O’Reilly point blank asked Trump, “You didn’t direct [Rudy Giuliani] to go to Ukraine on your behalf”? and the president emphatically said “NO”. 

But the READ THE TRANSCRIPT crowd knows Trump’s July 26th phone call to President Zelenskyy has him telling the Ukrainian president that he will have Giuliani call him.  “I will ask him to call you,” the president says,  “along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy.

It’s dishonest and disingenuous for Burgess and members of his Party to suggest that this impeachment hearing is illegitimate.  Would his perception be fundamentally different if similar testimonies were aimed at President Obama or even a President Biden,  Warren or Sanders?

Burgess owes his constituents an honest, objective assessment of the facts in this impeachment process, not some baseless, emotional sentiment that diminishes his own credibility and smears the democratic principles he’s sworn to uphold.