OPINION:
Last week, CNN revealed that Ian Sams, a special assistant to President Biden, sent a memo to most of the nation’s major news organizations urging them to “ramp up the scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies” and arguing that rather than covering the process, they should be attacking the whole idea as unjustifiable.
Mr. Sams asserted: “Covering impeachment as a process story — Republicans say X, but the White House says Y — is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable.”
He went on, “And in the modern media environment, where everyday liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to FOX, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds and obscure the truth.”
Ignoring the White House’s orders to the media on how the impeachment investigation should be covered? The utter hypocrisy is amazing.
Progressives and the mainstream media treated both attempts to impeach former President Donald Trump as legitimate, overdue, and worth covering in detail. They accepted the evidence as credible and defended those making the charges against Mr. Trump even as their motives and the validity of the “evidence” were in doubt.
Lies, rumors and allegations that couldn’t be corroborated were used to justify going after a sitting president. Mr. Trump’s defenders were dismissed as partisan toadies ignoring the evidence to defend a clearly guilty man.
Take the case of former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who claimed in March 2019 and repeated — even after the exhaustive Mueller investigation found no such evidence — that Mr. Trump, his son Donald Jr. and others involved in his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow to win the presidency.
Mr. Schiff berated his colleagues and the Mueller investigation for ignoring what he believed as tangible evidence and repeated his allegations to wide press appeal even after they were found to be bogus. Progressives still regard him as a hero, and he is running for the Senate with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blessing.
The second Trump impeachment hinged on a single phone call and was based on even less “evidence” but was hastily filed to “get” the hated incumbent before he left office. Mainstream media treated it seriously in extensive friendly coverage. Had the allegations made against Mr. Trump been corroborated, they would have justified his impeachment and conviction. But no corroborating evidence was uncovered.
Now the media is berating House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for not holding a full vote on impeachment, even though it was considered legitimate when Mrs. Pelosi began the process against Mr. Trump in the same way.
The opening phase of any impeachment proceeding is more investigative than prosecutorial. In this phase, Congress investigates allegations that, if true, may justify voting to impeach and refer the matter to the Senate for trial.
Today, the House is in the investigative phase to determine whether the allegations linking Mr. Biden to the nefarious activities of his son can be corroborated to justify moving to the next step. For the president’s defenders to argue that the investigation itself shouldn’t be undertaken because the investigators don’t already have incontrovertible proof linking the president to Hunter’s activities is absurd.
The available evidence certainly justifies the investigation. To argue as Mr. Sams does that there should be no investigation without the evidence the House seeks in hand before the investigation begins makes little logical sense.
The allegations raised in dozens or hundreds of emails, along with the testimony of whistleblowers and now a video of the elder Mr. Biden meeting with one of his son’s clients while vice president at the official residence, are more superficially damning. This is more than anything the Democrats used to justify two impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump.
One would expect the president’s supporters to dismiss the evidence against him as too weak to conclude that he has done anything wrong. That’s fair.
But to suggest as the White House is in lockstep with the president’s supporters in Congress and the media does that “there is no evidence,” or that Republicans are proceeding toward impeachment for partisan reasons or as revenge for the way Democrats went after Mr. Trump won’t wash.
If reporters had made any effort to determine the validity of the allegations as they surfaced to at least satisfy the public’s desire for transparency, Congress might not have been forced to begin the current impeachment process at all.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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