(Note: The following events never happened. At least not involving the individuals depicted here.)
WASHINGTON — The Republican-dominated House of Representatives moved closer this week to impeaching President Hillary Clinton.
The potential impeachment stems from allegations that Clinton and her associates obstructed justice by covering up her campaign’s involvement with Chinese hackers and the Chinese government.
Clinton, who has pledged to fight all congressional subpoenas related to the inquiry, has been plagued throughout her presidency by charges that her campaign conspired with the Chinese to swing the 2016 election.
Republicans also allege that Clinton and her husband have used the Clinton Foundation to curry favor with the Chinese government, and that they subsequently lied about those efforts.
“It’s time the American people learned the truth about the dirty tricks that Hillary Clinton and her team used to steal the election with the secret help of the Chinese government,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.). “But we won’t know everything that happened until the president cooperates with Congress’s constitutionally mandated role to provide oversight of the executive branch.”
Clinton is a minority president who lost the popular vote to Donald Trump by nearly 3 million votes but, thanks to the Electoral College, squeaked into office through narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Democrats took over the Senate in 2016, but Republicans held onto the House of Representatives. They further strengthened their hand in the 2018 midterms as voters turned against the Clinton administration.
In a memorable moment from the 2016 campaign, Clinton invited the Chinese government to hack into Donald Trump’s computers and reveal embarrassing information about his businesses. “China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns?” she said.
A special counsel investigation of the Clinton campaign, led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller, found that Clinton campaign representatives had over 140 contacts with the Chinese.
Clinton, who denies all wrongdoing, has repeatedly attacked the special counsel and called the media “the enemy of the people.” She refused to meet with Mueller because her attorneys feared she would not testify honestly.
The Mueller report concluded that Clinton and her surrogates appear to have obstructed justice on at least 10 occasions, as they fought revelations about the Chinese hacking of Trump’s tax returns and their actions to aid her campaign.
Among other attempts to obstruct justice, Mueller cited Clinton’s firing of FBI Director James Comey when he would not pledge loyalty to her. The special counsel’s report also documented that Clinton ordered the White House counsel to fire Mueller and that she directed the payment of hush money to silence harmful allegations about her husband’s behavior.
Clinton stated to NBC that she fired Comey because she was thinking about “the China thing.” She also told Chinese officials during an Oval Office meeting that by firing the “nut job” Comey, she had taken great pressure off herself.
Mueller, however, made no determination of whether these actions constituted illegal obstruction of justice. He noted Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president — but also stated that his investigation did not exonerate Clinton.
The president greeted the special counsel’s report with a claim of “complete and total exoneration.” She has derided Republican efforts to investigate her as “a witch hunt.”
Among Clinton campaign officials who have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of crimes are her campaign manager, Robbie Mook; her chief strategist, Joel Benenson; Clinton’s personal attorney David Kendall; and the national security advisor, Susan Rice, for lying about contacts she had with the Chinese government.
Mueller indicted a Chinese citizen who received polling data from Mook that aided efforts to swing the election to Clinton. The special counsel also charged three Chinese companies and 25 individuals who implemented Chinese government actions to intervene in the election.
Kendall, Clinton’s personal attorney, is now serving a three-year prison sentence after being convicted of multiple crimes. He pleaded guilty to working at Clinton’s direction to make hush money payments to two women — a porn star and a former Playboy model — who said they had sex with former President Bill Clinton.
The Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, has also been embroiled in controversy. After first denying it, she has acknowledged she met with Chinese emissaries during the campaign to get “dirt” on Trump.
When the meeting was later reported by The New York Times, Hillary Clinton dictated and ordered Chelsea to release a dishonest statement about the purpose of the meeting. Chelsea Clinton is also suspected of lying to Congress about the meeting.
In a meeting last year with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Clinton said she believed Xi’s claim that his government did not intervene in the 2016 election. Her statement came despite the unanimous conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies that the Chinese had in fact worked to illegally influence the outcome.
“Our country was attacked by the Chinese,” Speaker McCarthy said. “Yet the president has refused to even acknowledge that, much less act to prevent another attack in 2020.”
While Republicans in the House continue to ponder impeachment, they have hesitated to open a formal inquiry because they believe that the Senate, which is dominated by Democrats, would refuse to convict her.
Greg Dennis’s column appears here every other Thursday and is archived on his blog at gregdennis.wordpress.com. Email: [email protected]. Twitter: @greengregdennis.