The “quid pro quo” is to the impeachment inquiry as “collusion” was to the Mueller investigation: anti-Trump narratives in search of a crime.

The “quid pro quo” is being worked up by the cabal of impeachers to concoct a bribo-treasonality high-crimey and misdemeanorish Trump-Unacceptability that will pass muster as a category of wrong-doing for the ritual of Constitutional Impeachment. A lot of legal words – subpoena, quid pro quo, testimony – are chanted to make it all sound due processy, just as recommended by the protocols of lynching (as conducted by Captain Lynch on British crown loyalists), kangaroo courts, witch trials and Soviet political show trials.

There, in the basement of the Capitol, behind locked doors with signs saying “Trump-free zone”, impeachers are composing an incantation, which, when delivered with great solemnity somewhere in the vicinity of a gavel, will denounce Trump for Trump-Unacceptability, and the populace will then hurl their votes against him.

Progress is being made. They have decided that “habeus corpus” does not require them to create an actual voodoo doll stuck with pins to present to the Senate. (But they can rest happy in the knowledge that actual witches are gathering to curse Trump, and have sent out directions for doll-making out of simple every-day orange items. Cheetos. Oranges.) [See here and here.]

No, their hermeneutics has persuaded them that the press’s metaphorical doll-torture – poking at Trump’s image and reputation – is all that is necessary to satisfy the sympathetic magic clause (“due process”) of the Constitution, which a few exegetical haruspices have suggested might be an implicit requirement in the impeachment clauses.

C.Gee    October 25, 2019