In the two remaining months leading up to the supposed peaceful transfer of power in Congress, be prepared to hear the word ‘Impeachment’ at least 100 times a day.
With Democrats increasingly talking about impeaching everyone in Trump’s Cabinet, the familiar chorus of congressional outrage will start to sound like a broken record. Subpoenas! Hearings! Investigations! Articles of impeachment! Maybe even a sternly worded letter or two!
And somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump is probably laughing.
Because if there's one thing Trump has learned from his decades of legal maneuvering, two impeachments, four criminal indictments, and over 30 felony convictions, it's that the American justice system has an extraordinary capacity to make a tremendous amount of noise while delivering remarkably little in the way of consequences.
And unless Democrats understand that distinction, we're about to witness another spectacular exercise in political posturing.
Okay, fine. Impeachment is not meaningless in principle. It's an essential constitutional mechanism designed to hold presidents and other federal officials accountable for serious misconduct. It can result in removal from office and, potentially, disqualification from holding future federal office. So long as Mitch McConnell isn’t involved.
But impeachment is not a criminal prosecution. It cannot send anyone to prison. It cannot impose criminal fines. And it cannot substitute for the kind of legal accountability that ordinary Americans face when they break the law.
That distinction matters. A lot.
Trump was impeached twice. Once over his efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating a political rival, and again following the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Both times, the Senate acquitted him.
And what did those historic proceedings ultimately accomplish in terms of criminal accountability?
Absolutely nothing.
Trump went on to reclaim the presidency, his political influence strengthened rather than diminished. The first former president ever convicted of a felony returned to the White House without serving a single day behind bars.
Try explaining that to someone sitting in prison for selling a bag of weed.
The problem isn't that impeachment is inherently worthless. The problem is that Democrats have repeatedly treated it as the ultimate expression of accountability when, in reality, it's merely one component of it.
And an increasingly toothless one at that.
Consider the spectacle of January 6.
Americans watched a violent mob storm the Capitol, assault police officers, smash windows, and attempt to disrupt the certification of a presidential election. Hundreds of participants were prosecuted. Some received substantial prison sentences.
Meanwhile, Trump, whose conduct surrounding the attack led to his second impeachment and subsequent federal criminal charges, ultimately returned to the Oval Office.
The federal election-interference prosecution was dismissed after his reelection, consistent with longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. (BTW, the fact our entire system of justice relies on a memo written over 50 years ago — by a Nixon lawyer — is another matter, altogether.)
The MAGA-friendly Supreme Court's presidential-immunity ruling had already ruined the case.
Then came Trump's sweeping pardons and commutations for January 6 defendants.
Imagine being a Capitol Police officer who was beaten defending the building, only to watch the man impeached over the events of that day return to power and grant clemency to people convicted of participating in the attack.
Americans aren't demanding another season of Law & Order: Congressional Hearings. They're demanding a justice system that applies the same standards to powerful politicians that it applies to everyone else.
That means actual investigations with prosecutorial consequences where the evidence supports them.
Of course, criminal accountability for the plethora of criminals in the Trump administration presents enormous obstacles. For one: our Supreme Court seems to believe The Constitution is made to be re-interpreted as they see fit, and currently features one justice whose wife was a major player in the Stop the Steal movement, and another whose wife was blamed for hanging a flag upside down outside their home during the Capitol attack.
Thus, it came as no surprise when they established far-reaching immunity protections for presidential official acts. Even blatant crimes. A sitting president cannot be federally prosecuted under longstanding Justice Department policy — there’s that Nixon memo again. And any eventual criminal case must satisfy constitutional protections, evidentiary requirements, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Translation: Good luck with that.
Then, there’s our Attorney General. Basically an errand boy for our Mafia Don president. The odds of getting Todd Blanche to indict, or even enforce a congressional subpoena, are about as slim as Elon Musk abandoning AI due to the harm it could do to humanity. Congressman Jamie Raskin just floated the idea of impeaching Blanche. Great. And I’m sure good ole Todd, the patriot he is, will have no issue indicting himself, too.
Not to mention, conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds majority. Without sufficient bipartisan support, impeachment can become a foregone conclusion before the first witness is sworn in. Again, dog and pony show.
That doesn't mean Congress should abandon its constitutional responsibilities. Sometimes an impeachment proceeding is necessary simply to establish a public record and defend constitutional boundaries.
But let's stop pretending that putting an asterisk next to a president's name in the history books is the same thing as holding him accountable.
It isn't.
If Democrats want to restore public faith in the rule of law, they need to figure out a way to go beyond impeachment.
The American people have endured years of political theater masquerading as justice. They've watched investigations announced with great fanfare, waited patiently through months of red tape, and heard promises that accountability was just around the corner, be it Mueller and/or Jack Smith, only to witness the powerful figures in charge squash it all.
Enough is enough.
Impeachment should be the beginning of accountability, not the grand finale.
Because if the only consequence for abusing presidential power is having Congress formally announce that you've abused presidential power, we've reduced one of the Constitution's most serious remedies to little more than a glorified Yelp review.
One star.
"Would not recommend."
And the defendant still gets the presidential suite.
Democrats take heed:
Until impeachment is accompanied by a credible path toward actual legal consequences for provable crimes, all the righteous speeches, televised hearings, and triumphant press conferences in Washington amount to little more than window dressing.
And America doesn't need another window dressed.
It needs the rule of law restored. Before it’s gone for good.