The harm in delaying impeachment

In a stunningly brazen move, as Melissa McEwan of Shakesville calls it, the nasty guy has given his Attorney General William Barr the power to declassify secret intelligence. This is a part of an audit of intelligence agencies’ investigation of Russian election interference. All in the name of “transparency.”

That may need a bit of translating. The various intelligence agencies have, of course, been investigating how Russia interfered in our elections. If anyone has proof of the nasty guy working with the Russians, they would.

So the nasty guy wants to “audit” these investigations. There are all sorts of reasons – none good for democracy – why the nasty guy wants to do this. One reason would be to discredit the intelligence agencies.

We already know how eager Barr is to protect the nasty guy. So we can be sure the memos that somehow damage the nasty guy will stay classified. And the ones that help the nasty guy will be declassified – whether or not they might harm intelligence agents or the nation as a whole. It also gives Barr and the nasty guy a chance to say we’ve declassified all this stuff and it shows nothing, allowing them to imply there is nothing hidden that might implicate the nasty guy.

McEwan sums it up:

It's another catastrophic erosion of our democracy, and it demands accountability, and there is no one empowered to deliver consequences who feels inclined to do it.

She later added a comment to this post:

Here is a perfect example of why I have been urgently calling for impeachment hearings. By not calling for impeachment hearings sooner, and by so closely tying impeachment to the Mueller report, Democrats have lost a major battle.

Because now Barr controls the messaging around the Mueller report.

If Democrats would have launched impeachment proceedings before the Mueller report came out, it would have bolstered their case and allowed them to make the argument that withholding the report was designed to conceal evidence that they were right to impeach him.

Instead, we've now got Barr in control of leaking only what details he wants to shape the public dialogue, and to discredit the investigatory agencies, their intel, and their conclusions.

This is so bad. Waiting is a terrible idea. It offers continual opportunity for Trump & Co. to seize and control not just the messaging (although that, too), but our very democracy.

Sarah Kendzior comments on a tweet that said the nasty guy gets to call anything he disagrees with as fake news:

They've refused to hold impeachment hearings and thus opened the door for show trials.