The Downside of Being a Sociopath

Soon after last week’s edition of this blog went to press, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives was opening an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump over the Ukraine affair. It was a moment many opponents of the Trump regime — myself included — had long been waiting for, and it came with shocking speed, over a scandal that had emerged seemingly out of nowhere almost overnight.

Since then we have watched events unfold at an even faster pace. Six House committees are moving with unusual (and appropriate) aggressiveness to fast track this investigation, inexorably heading for a full House vote on impeachment possibly as early as Thanksgiving. The (acting) Director of National Intelligence has already appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to try to explain his handling of the case; the US special envoy to Ukraine, who was named in the whistleblower complaint, resigned; depositions from numerous other implicated officials have been ordered; and the Secretary of State has tried to block those depositions with a pearl-clutching tweet about how the State Department Is being bullied by mean ol’ Congress. That Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has himself been subpoenaed, as he was revealed to have been on the Zelensky call despite pretending for all the world he wasn’t, part of what is emerging as much broader campaign of mafioso-like behavior by the White House to…