Democrats have opened Pandora's Box by taking up the subject of election influence coming from Ukraine. They seized upon the conversation between President Trump and Ukraine's President Zelensky, leaked by a Deep State operative embedded in the White House to someone claiming the status of whistleblower as the basis for their public impeachment hoax. It is a hoax for three reasons:

Because no actual impeachment committee has been established, as that would require their vulnerable members from districts Trump carried in 2016 to take an actual position on a dodgy impeachment enterprise. Because Trump said nothing wrong in his conversation. They expected him to keep the text of the call secret, but his transparency foiled their efforts to mischaracterize it. Because they know that Democrats enlisted help from Ukraine in 2016, so this impugning of Trump is yet another case of Democrats accusing Republicans of doing what they have done. And they are terrified of this coming out.

As it so happens, one of the key figures in the 2016 Democrat effort to influence the election with help from a foreign government has the entertaining name of Chalupa, a word seized upon by the Taco Bell chain for a menu item. Mollie Hemingway explains:

The chairmen of two Senate committees are insisting that the Department of Justice come clean about Democratic Party efforts to solicit Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, first alerted the department about the meddling in July of 2017 so it could be investigated, but under Rod Rosenstein's leadership and the direction of special counsel Robert Mueller, the inquiries of the then-Senate Judiciary chairman were ignored. In a Sept. 27 letter, Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., demand the Justice Department look into the "brazen efforts by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign to use the government of Ukraine for the express purpose of finding negative information on then-candidate Trump in order to undermine his campaign." The senators also want to know why Alexandra Chalupa, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants and longtime Democratic operative, has not been required to file paperwork as a registered foreign agent of Ukraine. "Aside from the apparent evidence of collusion between the DNC, Clinton campaign, and Ukrainian government, Chalupa's actions implicate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)," Grassley wrote in 2017. "Chalupa's actions appear to show that she was simultaneously working on behalf of a foreign government, Ukraine, and on behalf of the DNC and Clinton campaign, in an effort to influence not only the U.S voting population but U.S. government officials." In their letter sent this week, Grassley and Johnson ask why DOJ still has not required her to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine.

Recall that a FARA violation was the weapon used against General Flynn to attempt to coerce cooperation that would implicate the Trump campaign. While FARA violations were rarely prosecuted vigorously in the past, Team Mueller (really, Team Weissmann) has legitimized that tactic. Ms. Chalupa can be pressured to sing like a bird about who sent her to Ukraine.

The exploding cigars are going to be making a lot of noise in the next 13 months.

Graphic credit: Pixabay.