It was always a lie, and it needs to be untold.
The first impeachment of Donald Trump hinged on one and only one premise: the President of the United States had no legitimate reason to ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the gas company Burisma, and did so only for personal political gain.
After Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer’s bombshell testimony this week, this allegation has not just been debunked, it has been utterly obliterated.
So what did we learn?
First, Archer confirms Hunter was only scoring $80,000 a month from Burisma because he was selling “the illusion” of influence over his father.
Let’s be more generous than Mother Theresa and imagine that’s true - that it was just an illusion.
If Burisma thought it had bought off former Vice President Joe Biden, isn’t that maybe worth looking into?
But it gets worse; Archer also let slip that indeed Burisma had specifically asked Hunter to assist in the firing of a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the gas concern, and to take up the matter with “DC." Who in DC might they have been referring to?
And whaddya know? Not long after, in a tale told by Biden himself in 2018, on video, he got that prosecutor fired in a scene that, as he described it, could have come straight out of the Godfather.
So let’s connect these dots that do not appear to be in dispute: Burisma thought it was bribing Joe Biden through his son; they paid that son millions of dollars; and then Joe Biden did exactly what they wanted him to do.
Even if this was just a happy accident for the Bidens - that Joe doing the right thing in regard to Shokin serendipitously also made his kid rich - it is obviously a legitimate target of investigation.
As such, the first impeachment, so gravely conducted by the Democrats in the House of Representatives, must be expunged.
It really is incredible that the same Dan Goldman who now, as a member of Congress, is running point for the Biden defense was Trump’s prosecutor in the first impeachment. Increasingly, it looks like he was defending Biden, not prosecuting Trump, all along.
Did Goldman ask the FBI if they had any information suggesting bribery by Burisma to the Bidens? Because we now know that an FBI report alleging just that existed.
Did Goldman ask Hunter Biden if he had offered Burisma the illusion of influence before they started giving him Hefty bags full of cash?
No. Instead, he just took Alexander Vindeman’s word that there couldn’t possibly be any reason to look under the hood of a deal that enriched the Bidens and got Burisma exactly what it was asking for.
Expunging Trump’s impeachment matters because it sends a message to people such as Goldman that power will not enshrine lies, that the truth will always come out and win the day.
It will serve as a warning, including to Republicans today seeking to impeach Biden, that you better have the goods or history will find you laughable and lacking.
It would be reasonable for Speaker McCarthy and GOP leadership to consider that expungement is a hornet's nest not worth kicking, that it could put vulnerable members in a tough spot, but it needs to be done anyway.
McCarthy’s pitch will ring clear as a bell: It is now obvious that some kind of shady doings were going on with Hunter and Burisma, and so obviously President Trump had a right to want answers.
It is so demonstrably in the national interest to determine whether Vice President Biden was bribed that Trump’s impeachment for pursuing that question is now a dark stain on our democracy.
The smiling jackals who kneecapped the Trump presidency with this farcical impeachment were fond of saying that “impeachment is forever.”
Don’t count on it.
Donald Trump had every right to ask Zelensky what the hell was going on with Burisma, just as the American people have every right to ask that of Joe Biden today.
It remains to be seen if the floundering Biden administration can find a way out, these days they are actually floating the theory that he talked to Hunter’s business partners because they were mourning the death of Beau Biden.
But whether Biden manages to craft a defense or not, one thing is as clear as the summer sun: Donald Trump’s absurd impeachment must be expunged.
