Are Democrat Senators Laying Groundwork for Third Trump Impeachment?

According to Fred Lucas at The Daily Signal, President Joe Biden and Democrat Senators – along with help from some Republicans – are attempting to pass a bill to continue funding the war in Ukraine. Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) argued on X that the bill is “a predicate to impeach Donald Trump should he win a second term.” Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and others joined in the discussion. 

Lucas reported that 18 Republicans joined the Democrat majority to close the bill to debate and to move to a vote. The bill is for $95 billion dollars with $61 billion going to Ukraine and $14 going to Israel to eradicate Hamas after its October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.

“There is actually a very good argument that the exact same legal justification for the impeachment of 2019 would hold with this legislation,” Vance said of Trump’s impeachment by a Democrat-run House over his phone call to Ukraine’s president.

Vance referenced a recent Washington Post story that said: “Not incidentally, a U.S. official said, the hope is that the long-term promise – again assuming congressional buy-in – will also ‘future-proof’ aid for Ukraine against the possibility that former President Donald Trump wins his reelection bid.”

“The funding for Ukraine doesn’t just extend into 2024, it extends into 2025 and arguably even 2026,” Vance said of the bill. “By the admission of administration officials, it would explicitly tie the hands of the next president of the United States and force that president to continue funneling weapons and resources for Ukraine instead of negotiating a settlement.” …

As president, Biden supports continued funding for Ukraine – arguing that Russia must be prevented from further aggression. By contrast, Trump has said that if elected, he would negotiate a peaceful resolution between Ukraine and Russia.

“He will have a diplomatic agenda that would be directly thwarted by this legislation,” Vance said of Trump. “If he didn’t send the money to Ukraine – as is currently required by this legislation – it would establish a predicate that is exactly the same as the predicate in the 2019 articles of impeachment.”

“Other senators made other arguments about sending U.S. aid to Ukraine with little accountability. Senator Lee said, “The fact that we would do this without putting an inspector general in place specifically for this and adopting all sorts of other transparency, auditability provisions turns a blind eye to corruption,” Lee said.

Lee argued against funding Ukraine because they use the U.S. aid --  $8 billion – “to pay their civil servants, their bureaucracy, and you don’t put any restrictions on their ability to use it for salaries, or to use it for backing up the Ukrainian welfare system, or to sue it for handouts to favored companies like clothing stores and sellers of concert tickets, you know that it’s going to continue.”

Senator Johnson’s argument was that the Biden administration has no clear strategy for the war in Ukraine besides funding the war for Ukraine. “One of the depraved justifications for all the spending is that it’s really not going over to Ukraine, it’s helping to build our industrial base, an so it’s creating jobs in your state.”