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You know what doesn't pass the smell test in the Democrats' sham impeachment crusade? Their main beef is that President Donald Trump abused his power to interfere with a presidential election (2020), yet that's all they have been doing for the last three years.

Interference with a presidential election (2016) was also their allegation with the Russia-collusion hoax. Oh, my, how they revere the integrity of the election process.

Remember Rep. Schiff's endless guarantees that he had irrefutable evidence of Trump's collusion with Russia?

Well, even the Democrats' would-be savior, former special counsel Robert Mueller, and his team of Trump-hating attorneys, couldn't produce a scintilla of evidence implicating Trump. If Schiff had the goods on Trump, he would have turned them over to Mueller. But nothing came of it, which means that Schiff didn't just make an honest mistake or, in his emotional zeal, overstate his case.

No, he outright lied. And this isn't a minor fib about a small matter but a major lie about a gravely serious matter. Savor the irony: Schiff brazenly fabricated a tale about having concrete evidence that Trump interfered with an election so that he himself could spearhead the mother of all election-interference capers: undoing Trump's 2016 election and preventing his 2020 reelection.

Has Schiff been held to account for his lies? To the contrary, he's been rewarded by his co-conspiratorial party with leadership of the latest election interference scheme. Interestingly, this charade began with a so-called whistleblower, who was probably not a whistleblower at all but a Democratic plant in the bowels of the Trump administration as part of another "insurance policy" to undermine the man who was duly elected under our constitutionally prescribed method for electing presidents.

For all the preening about the integrity of the democratic process from a party that routinely undermines the Constitution and our national sovereignty through judicial activism, lawless executive orders, the administrative state and its open borders policy, couldn't the Democrats even pretend to treat presidential impeachment as mildly serious?

No, because their concern isn't election interference or respect for the Constitution but regaining power and advancing their leftist agenda at all costs. If they were so dedicated to our democracy, they'd quit exploiting the impeachment clause to reverse the results of an election. They'd stop saying, along with other cynics, that "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" has no meaning apart from how the House chooses to define it.

Wrong. The framers chose all of their constitutional language carefully, and this was no exception. These terms had meaning under English common law and American jurisprudence. It's one thing to say that because the House has the authority to impeach, the constitutionally specified grounds for impeachment are irrelevant or the House has no duty to honor the Constitution. These elected leaders are ultimately accountable to the people, and if they abuse their authority to impeach a president, because they hate him or have policy disagreements with him, then they should be held to account.

One said they must impeach him so he doesn't get reelected. Another boasted that they are going to "impeach the mother-----." When the Russia-collusion hoax didn't work, they instantly pivoted to Ukraine. Why not? To them, impeachment is as easy as a grand jury indicting a ham sandwich.

Presidential impeachment is an extraordinary remedy and should be used sparingly for egregious and certain misconduct, not as a weapon used by a single party to disenfranchise voters -- especially when the people will be able to decide the matter for themselves with another election within months of the completion of this bogus process.

Precisely because of the gravity of the procedure, great care should be taken to ensure fairness. They should at least follow accepted evidentiary rules and accord Trump a level of due process provided to an alleged petty thief.

Against Trump, the process began in the basement and has now come upstairs with a one-sided kangaroo proceeding conducted by the Trump-loathing Adam Schiff, who is acting both as prosecutor and judge, even interrupting the Republicans' cross-examination in mid-question to coach a witness on his answer.

Everyone has already noted that the Democrats' case is based on hearsay. But that's not their only assault on justice and fairness. They claim Trump withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on one of his likely 2020 rivals, Joe Biden. But the facts including the statements of the Ukrainian president and the delivery of the aid despite no investigation of Biden indicate the promise of aid wasn't conditioned on an investigation, and so, the case for a quid pro quo is weak. Equally important, they have no idea what Trump's motive was. If we are to have any respect for our election process, they must produce some evidence of Trump's criminal intent (mens rea) beyond wishful thinking -- especially when they are alleging bribery, a specific intent crime.

Trump was likely more concerned about uncovering Ukraine's possible complicity in the 2016 election and why the Bidens weren't investigated than in exposing Biden's corruption to undermine his 2020 presidential bid. The point is we don't know and won't know, and yet, they're going to impeach Trump anyway, imputing a motive to him they can't possibly divine. The Democrats have been salivating over a plausible opportunity to impeach Trump since before he took office, so why quibble over a little hearsay and imputed motives?

People say that the thrust of this impeachment farce is a policy difference between the deep state and President Trump. To be sure, this is a factor, but the main thing is that the Democratic establishment, the leftist media and the entrenched bureaucrats cannot stomach Trump occupying the highest office in the land. They despise him and have contempt for the tens of millions of voters who elected him, and the last thing they want to do is to give Trump and his deplorables a chance to do it again.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com.