A conservative attorney knocked down Republican arguments against impeachment one by one in a viral tweet, and urged others to support the removal President Donald Trump.
Bryan Gividen, an appellate attorney from Dallas, touted his conservative bona fides by describing himself as a "pro-religious liberty, pro-life, would snort Cocaine Mitch’s judicial confirmations" if he could -- but still said he supports Trump's impeachment.
"At this point, there is no question that President Trump directed U.S. officials to withhold security funding to the Ukraine so Ukraine would investigate the Bidens," Gividen began. "That is the kind of abuse of the President’s authority we should not tolerate."
The attorney argued that Trump had clearly held "hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money as a bargaining chip to make a foreign country investigate his rivals."
"That is a textbook play from dictators who are trying to keep power," Gividen tweeted.
Gividen argued that it doesn't matter whether the Bidens were corrupt, because the foreign investigation sought by Trump was improper, and he said the president should be held accountable for using foreign policy to target individual Americans for his own political gain.
He agreed that some Democrats would have liked to impeach Trump over almost any infraction, but he said that was a distraction
"Stupidity doesn’t excuse stupidity," he said. "We’re asking whether President should be impeached, not whether Democrats are consistent."
Republicans should rest assured that Vice President Mike Pence would pursue a similar conservative agenda if Trump was impeached, but Gividen said American liberty was at stake if the president wasn't removed.
"We Americans often take for granted what our security and freedom mean," Gividen tweeted. "In recorded history, few have had it as good as we do for as long as we have. A President willing to sell out Americans for his own power threatens what so many have built & fought & bled & died for."
The abuse of power Trump turned against Biden could easily be used against a Republican rival.
"Don’t doubt for a second that if Ted Cruz had tried to primary Trump, he’d be next," Gividen argued. "Don’t support impeachment because you like the Democrats. Support impeachment because you fear that Donald Trump’s abuse of the presidency threatens your freedom."