'Constitutional law scholar' Streisand explains impeachment

FPI / December 6, 2019

Rest assured America, Barbra Streisand has spoken on impeachment.

The leftist entertainer (and, as Breitbart News noted, new “Constitutional law scholar”) on Thursday revealed her six reasons why President Donald Trump must be impeached.

Those reasons, according to Streisand, are:

1. Trump bribed and extorted the Ukraine with taxpayer money to investigate a political rival for personal gain.
2. Trump believes he is above the law. He thinks presidents can do anything.
3. Trump threatened a witness, a career diplomat, during the impeachment inquiry.
4. Trump clearly lied and obstructed justice in the Mueller investigation.
5. Trump dismisses intelligence briefings about Russia’s role in undermining our democracy, and repeats Kremlin disinformation on Ukraine.
6. Trump is personally profiting from the presidency, violating the emoluments clause. He charges our government to stay at his resorts.

All six of Streisand’s reasons for impeachment “are points that have been thoroughly debunked over the last year,” Breitbart’s Hannah Bleau noted.

Under questioning from Republicans during the House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, not one witness was able to offer evidence that Trump bribed or extorted Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

The only actual “fact witness,” Ambassador Gordon Sondland, admitted under cross examination by Republicans that his claims of quid pro quo in the Trump-Zelensky call were merely his own presumptions. Sondland also admitted that Trump told him he wanted “nothing” from Ukraine.

“They got the call July 25. They got the meeting — not in the White House but in New York — on September 25. They got the money on September 11,” Rep. Jim Jordan said. “I mean, you got all three of them wrong. They get the call, they get the meeting, they get the money. It’s not 2+2. It’s 0-3. I mean I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Streisand’s claim that Trump believes he is “above the law” is “based purely on conjecture,” Bleau wrote for Breitbart. The leftist celebrity’s assertion that the president “intimidated” a witness “has been thoroughly debunked, as former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch would not have known about the president’s tweet during the hearing had Schiff not mentioned it.”

Additionally, Bleau wrote, “the Mueller report found no evidence of conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and while it did not make a determination on obstruction, Attorney General William Barr said there was not enough evidence to substantiate it.”

As for the so-called myth of Ukraine interference, far-left news outlets such as CNN, CBS News, Politico, and the New York Times reported on possible Ukrainian meddling repeatedly, as Breitbart News’s John Nolte has extensively detailed.

Analysts say that Democrats floating a violation of the Emoluments Clause by Trump are basing their claim on left-leaning academics who are suspicious of the free market, and have come up with an anti-market interpretation of the Emoluments Clause that essentially requires presidents to divest such business interests (presumably, at fire sale prices) before assuming office.

In the Los Angeles Times, a May 14 op-ed claimed “the Constitution’s emoluments clause” is based on “a dread of corruption” from “officeholders” tainted by “the scrum of the marketplace,” and that Trump’s continuing business holdings are “violating it.”

As National Review notes, these expansive, anti-market interpretations of the Emoluments Clause would snare not just Trump, but also other modern presidents such as Barack Obama, who obtained copyrights while in office from many foreign governments to sell his books overseas.

Free Press International