As we approach the election season (for some of us, it is already here), I can’t resist making a few national politics comments, but I promise my kindly and forgiving editor that I will end with something specifically about Colorado politics, unless I run out of space (Ed: keeping my eye on you…).

I’d like to spend this column discussing a recent Colorado Politics story wherein we learned even as the MAGA wing of the U.S. House pursues impeachment against President Joe Biden, their case is predictably falling apart. As it turned out, the FBI just arrested the so-called informant who served up those juicy bits of anti-Biden claims regarding a Ukrainian oil company paying the president and his son Hunter a whopping $5 million in bribes. The FBI learned the person in question, Alexander Smirnov, lied about the whole thing and he has now been indicted for making false statements and creating a fake record.

And it gets worse, in that the people he was getting his “dirt” on the Bidens from were, gasp, members of the Russian secret intelligence organization. Yup, Putin and his lackies really want former President Donald Trump back in office, for obvious reasons, and they tried to find what we in political science sometimes call “useful idiots” to move a narrative forward. At the top of that agenda, by the way, is the hobbling or destruction of NATO, so Trump’s recent invitation to Russia to invade any NATO country Trump thinks isn’t paying their share (even though there are no dues, only a promise to spend 2% of GDP on self defense).

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But, getting back to the “impeachment,” the bottom line is the GOP’s star witness is a liar who is in the service of Russian spies. Not too compelling, eh?

Now, if people like Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a primary impeachment driver, were honest and had, dare I say it, character, they would drop the so-called investigation and apologize. That’s what they would do if they had integrity, but I’m not holding my breath. Heck, Jordan even said on camera the arrest of his star witness for lying “doesn’t change the fundamental facts.” I suppose he could mean he knew the Bidens were innocent from the outset, but I’m guessing that is not, in fact, what he means.

But I’m not going to talk about that.

I’m also tempted to talk about another CoPo story wherein the New York attorney general announces if a certain former president who claimed he is vastly wealthy refused to pay the $454 million civil fraud fine levied against him, she may seek to just seize his assets. Even if he wishes to appeal, which is totally his right, just like any other defendant found to be guilty of fraud, he must put down roughly that same amount of money owed in the judgement in what us lay folks would call an escrow account.

You don’t get to escape your obligations just by appealing, you need to come up with the bucks first. Here’s the thing though: he recently claimed to have lots and lots of cash, hundreds of millions, just laying around. And he made that statement under oath in a sworn deposition. So, if he does not actually have that much cash available, as he and his team seem to be claiming now, that means he lied under oath about his wealth. You know, perjury.

What does this tell us about how Trump is being treated? Well, for what could be the first time in his life, he is being treated like every other American is treated by the federal judiciary. Recall he currently has a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. That highest court will decide if all the earlier judges in lower courts were wrong, and that a president has total immunity for any action taken as president, as Trump insists is true.

His lawyer actually claimed that, unless he was impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate, Trump could, as president, lawfully order SEAL Team Six to murder a political opponent. Think about that for a moment: Trumps claims as president he is above all law, even statutes surrounding murder. Heck, I guess he could walk up 15th Street in D.C. to the McDonalds made famous by former President Bill Clinton (and where I dined regularly) and rob it, because, heck, he’s above the law. 

I’m pretty sure our nation fought its first war over that very idea, and we rejected the notion of a national leader who is above the law. You know, a king. And if Trump truly believes this fundamentally un-American theory of the law, and he wins in November, what’s to stop him from locking up any dissenting voices and after four more years in office, declaring that the 22nd Amendment doesn’t apply to him, and he just going to announce the elections results himself in, say, October, showing a Trumpian landslide?

Silly? Maybe. Worrisome? Very much so.

But I’m not going to talk about that.

Now to Colorado topics…

Wait, I’m at my word limit? Shucks. Next Tuesday I promise to be better.

Stay tuned…

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.