Yesterday Justin Amash (R-MI) wrote a thread on Twitter explaining why he believes President Trump should be impeached, and he supports his belief against his reputation as a “staunch defender of the Constitution”. I don’t know a lot about Amash specifically, but I’ve heard his reputation as a strict constitutionalist, and it left me scratching my head. Where was Amash’s support for impeachment based on “finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct” during.thenlast administration?

There are plenty of examples of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and violating separation of powers in the last administration with which Amash did not feel necessary to reach a “principled conclusion” and at least submit articles of impeachment, why did Obama get an pass from Amash and Trump doesn’t? This doesn’t give me a confidence that Amash is being honest with his assessment, nor that his argument isn’t made in bad faith.

Here are my principal conclusions:

1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.

2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.

3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.

4. Few members of Congress have read the report. — Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019

It is obvious to everyone that the Mueller investigation was politically motivated, so spare us the attempt at pretending to be ignorant of that point Congressman. The threat to the Constitution is the abuse of the intelligence community and DoJ for political purposes, which obviously occured under Obama and the target was Trump. His failure to acknowledge this proves his argument is in bad faith. Amash also gives no evidence in his thread, he suggests that the Constitution implies something (which is an unusual take for an originalist) he even plainly states that there doesn’t need to be probable cause, a pretty horrifying statement from a small government guy if you think about it.

The reason why Amash’s argument is in bad faith is because he isn’t actually making the argument to impeach, he’s testing the waters for a primary run against Trump. Amash used Twitter to post his message, that way his team can gauge the popularity of the statements, he will likely appear on main stream media to defend his point, and he will hire a polling firm to gauge Conservarive support for impeaching Trump. Amash sees a field of Democrats which is so large, and fractured he knows Trump has a pretty good shot at a substantial victory, he knows that 2020 may be the perfect and only time that a split GOP could still put a Republican in the White House, and I think Amash wants to be that Republican. It’s sad to think that Amash could be as much of a grifter as Kristol’s Bulwarkians, but I find it hard to reach a different conclusion.

Check out our whole analysis of this and more on YouTube