I’m from Indiana. I hate to admit that fact these days. It’s embarrassing enough to have a faux-President making a fool of himself and by extension, a fool of our country, but being a “Hoosier” these days only compounds the embarrassment.

The Kochs through continuously greasing their fair-hared boys; our ex-Governors, McDaniels and Mike Pence — Koch allies; ALEC and all its terrible initiatives; and very heavy ‘rural’ GOP gerrymandering in our state, have created an environment that makes Indiana one of the reddest of red States in the Union — although it did go for Obama in 2009.

History and reality notwithstanding, there are many small drops of us ‘Blue Hoosiers’ in this vast sea of red who continue to tilt at windmills. I, like many of my Hoosier ‘blue dot’ citizens continue to write and call our (a-hem) GOP Representatives and GOP Senators to register our opinions concerning actions they partake in OUR name.

So it was that I wrote my Senators last week, requesting that they give Donald J. Trump a FAIR trial in the U.S. Senate. A trial that would include witnesses, documents and exhibits. Both my U.S. Senators replied.

The first Senator, Todd Young, sent a two line, computer-generated, email reply message saying he had receive my message and would reply at a later date . . . (the old “I’ll get back to you”, line . . )

My second U.S. Senator, Mike Braun, sent a reply on “official” U.S. Senate stationery. (Which I can’t fully reproduce as an ‘artifact’ here, in this format.) However, here is his word for word reply . . .

January 13, 2020

Dear ,

Thank you for contacting me regarding President Trump. I appreciate hearing from you.

On September 9, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee was notified of a whistleblower complaint. The complaint relied on secondhand reports from unnamed sources to allege President Trump had improperly used the office of President to solicit cooperation from the Ukrainian President to investigate allegations of meddling in the 2016 election by Ukrainian officials and corrupt behavior from previous U.S. officials in Ukraine. The House Committee demanded immediate declassification of sensitive documents to investigate the claims. The President ordered the declassification and public release of both the transcript of the phone call between the President and Zelensky and the anonymous whistleblower report.

Before either the whistleblower’s report or the transcript of the conversation had been released, Speaker Pelosi announced she supported the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry in the House. As a result of that inquiry, on December 10, 2019, Representative Nadler introduced H. Res. 755, Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors, which included two articles of impeachment. On December 18, 2019, those two articles passed the House of Representatives on party lines.

Having read both the whistleblower report and the transcript of the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, I believe that the impeachment proceedings can only be characterized as a politicized attack on the Trump Administration. The documents reveal a conversation in which President Trump talked to President Zelensky about alleged corruption that occurred in Ukraine beginning under the Obama Administration and continuing through the 2016 election, topical and highly relevant to the United States’ recent relationship with Ukraine.

Career politicians, distressed by President Trump’s election in 2016, have sought from the day after the election to undermine his ability to effect change. Instead of working on issues that the American people care about, like healthcare reform, infrastructure, or ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the Democrats have instead decided to continue harassing the Trump Administration with flimsy and unsubstantiated claims.

I was elected by the people of Indiana to support President Trump in his efforts to change business as usual in Washington, D.C. That is what I intend to continue to do as your United States Senator.

It is an honor to serve as your U.S. Senator from Indiana. Please keep in touch with me on issues of concern to you. You can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook for real-time updates on my activities in the U.S. Senate. If I ever may be of service, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Element removed

Mike Braun

U.S. Senator

P.S. This message was sent by email to save taxpayer dollars.