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In an interview on Sirius XM's Breitbart News Sunday, Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) described his perspective on what the impeachment trial was really about. Rep Johnson was concerned that Democrats used the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump as "an attempt to equate the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump with the couple hundred [extremist] criminals who came in and ransacked the Capitol."

Johnson said, "Democrats' ultimate goal" in carrying the impeachment through was to "frame any of Trump's supporters as indistinguishable from Capitol rioters."

“They really wanted to use impeachment as a vehicle because they wanted to equate all those tens of millions of Trump’s voters and all of his supporters and everybody who came to the rally, they wanted to equate all of those people with the couple hundred criminals who came in and ransacked the Capitol,” Johnson stated.

“If [Democrats’] new impeachment standard is to take hold, most of the party leadership in the Democrats will have to be censured or impeached themselves,” Johnson added. “I thought Trump’s attorneys did such a great job with their video montage where they showed all these guys — even the impeachment managers themselves — using the exact same language that they were trying to incriminate the president by using.”

Johnson remarked, “[Trump] has always stood for law and order and defense of the Constitution. He’s always opposed mob violence.”

Damage Being Done

Interviewer and host Joel Pollak asked about the future of impeachment and what this would mean for lawmakers moving forward.

Johnson and many others are concerned that these back to back impeachment trials have weaponized the solemn impeachment process.

Johnson remarked, “You are lowering the bar [for impeachment] now. You've weaponized this. You turned it into a political weapon to be used by the majority party against a president they don’t like. A Pandora’s box that we may never be able to close again.”

By openly targeting former President Trump after he has returned to being a private citizen was in fact unconstitutional, based on constitutional law. Impeachment was a wasted feat - the House would have been better off immediately going towards prosecution based on actual criminal evidence.

Johnson assessed the situation based on his legal background as a practicing constitutional law attorney for two decades that this could become a political tool to remove opponents from office or from targeting opponents so they would never be able to run again.

Concerns for the Country Moving Forward

Ethical concerns are now permeating government and investigations may ensue. In treating impeachment so callously, future political candidates may now be removed from a viable race by opponents. Incumbents who typically have more funding at their disposal, would win creating an even more elite system of power than currently stands.

Johnson said the Framers intended for due process and the First Amendment to apply to public officials charged through impeachment.

“What the Founders had in mind when they set up this impeachment article and the idea behind it was that it would be so serious that the decorum would be so appropriate for the weight of a moment like that,” Johnson explained. “It was sort of presupposed. It was understood, of course, that you would afford due process. They didn’t need to spell out the federal rules of the civil procedure in the Constitution for something like this. They thought that everyone would be acting like adults.”

“This was not a constitutional exercise,” Johnson repeated. “What [Democrats] tried to do [is] to raise ‘cancel culture’ now to a constitutional level.”

Unfortunately, this only further divides and damages the country. Creating class warfare between politicians and elites vs the average working individual, while also creating a false political war which divides the people indefinitely.

Continued division of the people could create a situation  where both political sides are deemed dangerous and ungovernable. Should this ever happen, government reach could extend to areas never intended by the Founders, doing irrevocable damage to society.