SURENDRA PANDEY: Impeachment action endangers American democracy

Washington is caught in impeachment fever. During my lifetime, this is the third time the public is subjected to this Constitutional provision to remove an elected president.

The first time was during the Nixon presidency, which started when five men were arrested in June 1972 for breaking into Democratic National Committee offices located in the Watergate Office complex. Further investigations revealed the burglars were paid through a “slush” fund maintained by the Committee to Re-elect the President, and eventually ties to the White House staff.

Nixon tried his best to stop any further investigation, but it became more explosive by the day. Both the House and Senate conducted open public hearings that turned the tide against the president. When Nixon was informed that there was a strong bipartisan support for impeachment, he resigned in 1974. His successor, President Gerald Ford issued a full pardon to spare the nation of further pain and embarrassment and allow it to heal.

The second time impeachment fever spread in Washington was during Bill Clinton’s presidency. It was a very one-sided Republican-led effort to impeach the president with the hope that Clinton might follow Nixon’s example and resign, but he didn’t. Once again, there were open public hearings conducted by the House on a variety of charges, but most significant was perjury — lying under oath by denying a sexual relationship with a White House intern.

He was impeached by the House along a party-line vote in December 1998. Although the Senate had a Republican majority, it voted against removing Clinton from the office — many said lying about affairs is common and does not reach the level of the Constitutional requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It was clearly a partisan effort to remove Clinton that failed.

The seeds of the current impeachment attempt against President Trump were planted right after he took office because many Democrats refused to accept the 2016 election result. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., has been calling to “Impeach 45” since early 2017. Rep Al Green, D-Texas, said in an interview that if Trump is not impeached, he will be re-elected in 2020. So the Democratic party leaders decided on impeachment and started looking for evidence. Now they are conducting hearings completely closed to the public, and the committee chair leaks out selected information that he feels might help generate public opinion for impeachment.

Contrary to the first two impeachment hearings that were fully transparent, the present hearings are so secretive that it appears like a conspiracy to remove a Constitutionally elected president. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not even called for the House to vote authorizing an impeachment inquiry. This kind of conspiracy to overturn an election is a danger to the democracy and tarnishes the image of this country that the world sees as the beacon of hope for democracy and freedom.