Why Trump Should only have been impeached once...in 2017

To all those Republicans who are saying, “the democrats have been trying to impeach Donald Trump from day 1! This isn't about the president's actions, but a ongoing personal vendetta.” Have you considered that the reason might be because he's been a risk to the nation from the very beginning?

How short memories are.

Let's look at 2017. Most analysts at the time were sure that one of the main reasons Donald Trump won the election was the bombshell drop of the information found by the DNC hack and the revelation of Hilary Clinton's secret email server. Very many people were suspicious that the Trump campaign may have been involved in both of these leaks, which is absolutely not a crazy conclusion and ANY other candidate would have been investigated for this. It wasn't helped by his speech encouraging Russian hackers to conduct further breaches, especially since at that time, we didn't even know it was Russia who'd done it. Whether in jest or not, given the situation, it was something worth investigating, especially amid the numerous business deals between the Trump Corporation and Russian oligarchs at the time. These concerns were further exasperated by Trump's constantly shifting description of his relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Even the most shallow investigation revealed numerous connections between the Trump campaign and Russian contacts, including people from within the Russian government. There was proof of multiple contacts between Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Michael Flynn and these Russian sources. There was evidence of a cover up as well. Intelligence sources from Holland and UK both sent reports to US intelligence agencies saying that they intercepted messages talking of meetings with the Trump campaign. May I also mention the bombshell email exchange that showed that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort willingly met with Russian contacts for the sole purpose of obtaining information to help their campaign.

The FBI opened an investigation into these shady dealings, which resulted in a conviction for Michael Flynn for lying about his dealing with Russian agents. Trump almost immediately fired the director of the FBI James Comey after he refused to drop charges against Michael Flynn (it was later revealed that Trump had planned on firing him before, but it is suspicious enough to warrant an investigation). Following along? Good. At this point, Trump has been president for only two months.

I won't do a play by play of every single thing that happened. But to put it very simply, the evidence at the time seemed to suggest at the very least that there should be an investigation into the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. It was not a witch hunt. It was an obvious example of something that needed to be looked into, especially when the other country involved is a dangerous dictatorship that is often considered an enemy of the United States. The Democrats had very convincing arguments that Trump was trying to obstruct this investigation and that made him appear even more guilty. If there was nothing to be found, why did he seem so hell bent on stopping the investigation? This was enough for them to beginning discussing the possibility of impeachment, because of the impending threat that the president of the United States itself may owe a favor the Russian government.

Then we had the Mueller report. After a long investigation, we got the reveal that yes, without a doubt, Russian had interfered with our election in a way that was beneficial to Donald Trump (something that the Republicans keep saying was never found despite piles of evidence). His report also revealed that there were very clear connections and contacts between the Russian government, wikileaks, and the Trump campaign. However, there was not enough evidence to convict Donald Trump by the legal definitions of conspiracy. His report also concluded without a doubt that the president had broken the law, committed obstruction of justice numerous times, and were he a private citizen, he would have been convicted. However, due to his position as the president of the United States, any formal declaration wrongdoing would need to be done by congress by way of impeachment, which he narrowly avoided (we can't ignore how close he was to being impeached thrice.). These acts of the president to derail the investigation further added to the alleged suspicions that he may have had connections to Russia.

Bill Barr announced to the nation and lied about the contents of the report by saying, falsely, that the president was completely exonerated. In front of the House of Representative, Robert Mueller doubled down on the findings of his report and said that Trump absolutely committed numerous crimes that could be considered impeachable.

Fast forward two years and one actual impeachment. In 2020, a REPUBLICAN LED SENATE COMMITTEE concluded that the Trump campaign had significant dealing with a Russian agent who was involved with Russia's interference in the election of 2016, vindicating the Democrat's initial reasons for impeachment in his first year as president.

So yes, the Democrats have been trying to impeach Donald Trump from the very start of his presidency, not just because they hate him, but because he's ALWAYS been a threat to the country and should never have been allowed to be president. We can only wonder how these last four years would have turned out if the Republicans had actually done their job as public servants and not operated as soulless power brokers, bent on protecting the president in exchange for votes by his rabid base of KKK members and neo-Nazis.