Nancy, you may have to impeach him again

| 9:09 am EST February 21, 2020
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If Donald Trump were truly feeling “emboldened” by his acquittal – as so many headlines have recently insisted – he’d have pardoned Roger Stone yesterday, under the belief that he can get away with anything. Instead we’re seeing the same pattern from Trump as ever, in which he largely limits himself to the kinds of corrupt moves that he thinks won’t create too much of a headache for him. The trouble is, we can’t just sit back and do nothing between now and November, and in the meantime the list of available remedies is a rather short one.

If you’re the police and you arrest a guy for robbing a bank, but some corrupt official forces you to let him go, and then the guy turns around and robs another bank, you have to arrest him again – even if you expect he’ll very likely be set free again. If you don’t make clear to the bank robber that you’re going to at least keep trying to hold up your end of the law and order bargain, then he truly will become emboldened. This brings us to Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump.

Since his acquittal, Donald Trump illegally meddled in the Roger Stone criminal case, illegally ousted two impeachment witnesses from his administration in retaliatory fashion, and fired his Director of National Intelligence for daring to brief Congress. You can make a strong case that this is nothing new for Trump. His first major move on the job in 2017 was to meddle in the Michael Flynn case and then illegally fire James Comey. He’s been doing this stuff all along. But because he’s been impeached and because the election is coming up, everyone is watching more closely now – and so his ongoing crime spree is under a bigger microscope.

Nancy Pelosi can’t simply do nothing. She already knows she’ll have to do something, she knows what her options are, and she knows the pros and cons associated with each. She can hold public hearings on the Stone meddling, or the Joseph Maguire firing, or both. She can target Bill Barr for his role in the Stone scandal. She can try to force John Bolton to testify, now that his infernal book is coming out. Or she can just impeach Trump again on new articles of impeachment to match his new crimes.

Yes, the Republican Senate would acquit Donald Trump again. And yes, they might even refuse to calll witnesses again. But while Trump was being impeached in the House last time, he and his people were being forced to play defense instead of offense. The voting public was educated on Trump’s status as a criminal. And we’ve now seen that impeachment didn’t boost Trump’s terrible approval rating numbers one bit.

Impeaching Donald Trump again may or may not be the answer. Speaker Pelosi keeps showing us that she’s always one step ahead of us, so this delicate decision is perhaps best left up to her. But there will be House hearings on these new crimes. Lots of them. They’ll be public. Everyone who wants to testify will testify, because Trump has already shown he can only stop people who don’t really want to testify to begin with. Whether these hearings have the word “impeachment” attached to them, or whether they’re simply investigative in nature, remains to be seen.