The second impeachment trial of President Trump (this one, bizarrely, after he had already left office) has concluded.  After much posturing for the small audience who bothered to watch the proceedings, Donald Trump was again acquitted by the Senate, the predictable parade of partisans on both sides pontificated, and we were left to sort out this latest legislative clown show.  Apparently, our Representatives and Senators have loads of idle time to expend on this sort of thing.

The crux of the Democratic argument was that President Trump was attempting to incite an insurrection by questioning the legitimacy and honesty of the 2020 election results.  If we were to accept that as a valid reason for impeachment, we also had to accept that Democrats were counting on some very, very short memories.  

Does anyone remember that only four years ago Democrats were demanding Presidential Electors violate their oaths and cast their Congressional certification votes for Hillary Clinton—the people be damned?  Protests and incendiary claims that Donald Trump had committed election fraud (Russia, Russia, Russia!) drove that Democratic “insurrection” against the American people.  The amazing hypocrisy of last week’s impeachment was of little surprise—we are, after all, talking about Washington, D.C. here—but it did provide a suitable coda to the past four years of Democratic rage regarding the administration of President Trump.

The saddest part of this recent Impeach-A-Rama drama was the brief moment when it seemed that witnesses might be compelled to testify under oath.  Unfortunately, this was a suggestion that Democrats frantically dismissed, so an opportunity to actually serve America and the American people by breaking through the made-for-TV fakery was lost.

Witnesses who are sworn to tell the truth to the American people are a tool of justice; politicians who can say whatever they want are simply pushing an empty narrative.  One is a step forward toward true democracy.  The other is a gigantic step backwards into destructive demagoguery.

What has been largely forgotten regarding the entirely justified condemnation of those who stampeded into the halls of Congress is that they were justifiably angry that their questions about election fraud were being denigrated by those anxious—nay, desperate—to bury any concerns about the manner in which the votes were counted.  A concerted effort (some might say a conspiracy) to shut down any inquiry into irregularities surrounding ballot security and tabulation has already been detailed—in excruciatingly self-congratulatory detail—in the national news media, who are oddly oblivious to their own roles in this cover-up of potential criminality.  

Right now it is plain as day that no investigation, Special Counsel, Congressional committee meetings, or F.B.I. probe is planned to get to the truth of the matter regarding how someone could magically run up the largest vote total ever in a U.S. Presidential election (by a very wide margin) while also winning the lowest percentage of U.S. counties (only 16.7%) of any successful Presidential candidate in American history.   Perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for this amazing mathematical anomaly, but I have yet to hear a cogent explanation of how a sea of red with a thin and spotty crust of blue turns into 81 million legitimate Presidential votes. A little curiosity is warranted here.

Given that Congress now has been turned into a fortress, I doubt we will be seeing any more elected officials scurrying to lock themselves in their bathrooms.  However, the rage that drove that mob to act on January 6th still remains.  As it stands now all we know for certain is that at least 1/2 of America believes that “President Joe Asterisk” has been put in office through some measure of election fraud, and concerns about the legitimacy of his Presidency are not going to disappear any time soon.  

The anger that is evident on social media should not be censored out of existence by Big Tech billionaires or a government-appointed “Reality Czar”.  These concerns must be given a fair hearing via an investigatory process that has at least the equivalent powers and resources of the Robert Mueller investigation into possible foreign election interference in 2016.  If we gave Special Counsel Mueller nearly two years and over $30 million for an investigation into evidence regarding Russian collusion in 2016, we can certainly spare the same time and money for an inquiry regarding reasonable suspicions of widespread election fraud in 2020.

Will this happen?  Maybe.  Must this happen?  Absolutely.