Byrne: Answering the call – Fighting a phony impeachment

This year, Democrats finally did what they have wanted to do since November 2016 – move to impeach President Donald Trump. This plan was politically motivated from the beginning, and I decided to lead the fight against it.

This initial investigation into Donald Trump should never have begun in the first place. During the Obama presidency, partisan government officials abused their power and used a phony dossier paid for by Democrat political operatives to justify the investigation.

How could they run a phony investigation into then-candidate Trump while giving Secretary Hillary Clinton a pass on her many clear violations of the law?

I introduced a bill called the Investigate the Investigators Act to get the answers the American people deserve. This bill would enable the Department of Justice to determine what President Obama and his administration knew and when they knew it and why numerous questionable decisions were made in 2016 and beyond.

As expected, Pelosi had no interest in bringing to light answers that could undermine her impeachment scheme.

One of the key facets of her plan was to hold proceedings in the House Intelligence Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee. The Intelligence Committee is one of the House’s smallest committees, where the Speaker essentially handpicks its members.

Pelosi had a ready-made impeachment team loyal to her, led by Chairman Adam Schiff.

Another characteristic of the Intelligence Committee is that it often examines classified material and has wide latitude to hold secret hearings to protect classified information.

Schiff and Pelosi abused this to hold hearings in a classified meeting room called a SCIF, deep in the basement of the Capitol where the public and press could not access the facts.

Even though the information they reviewed was not classified, the public was kept out.

Several of my colleagues and I had enough. We entered the SCIF to observe the proceedings as we should be entitled to do as the people’s representatives.

Amazingly, Adam Schiff shut down the hearings. But we kept up the pressure. Eventually, Democrats agreed to release their secret transcripts.

Let’s not forget what started this whole Ukraine mess – Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings.

While Hunter’s dad, Joe, was Vice President of the United States, Hunter was making lucrative deals in countries like Ukraine and China.

In Ukraine, where his dad was leading U.S. foreign policy efforts, Hunter was serving on the board of a sketchy energy company called Burisma Holdings.

In the past, Joe Biden has bragged openly about successfully pressuring the Ukrainian government to remove Ukraine’s top prosecutor or risk losing United States assistance. That same prosecutor was allegedly investigating Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden sat at the time!

President Trump recognized the importance of rooting out corruption in a country to which we give millions of dollars in foreign aid, and he was totally justified in being skeptical of a new administration in a notoriously corrupt country.

If the same facts in the Biden case occurred with someone named Trump or Byrne, Democrats would have already launched a full-scale investigation. I decided to expose this hypocrisy.

In October, I introduced a House resolution calling for an investigation into the Bidens’ shady business dealings. Democrats will not consider it. The fact that they are continuing their sham Trump investigation while ignoring the real Biden scandal reveals their political motivations.

Throughout this investigation, I’ve continued to lead the charge against Democrats’ phony charges and hypocrisy. Democrats will not let up working to remove President Trump from office, even after he is acquitted by the Senate. You can rest assured I will continue to be a strong leader in the fight to protect President Trump.

U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne is a Republican from Fairhope. He is a 2020 candidate for the U.S. Senate.