From a political perspective there were really some amazing political scenes coming out of the USA over the last two weeks,
The Impeachment Process
The first one was an impeachment enquiry initiated by a mock session held by the DP to arrive at articles of impeachment, They refuse to follow the rules developed in the last previous impeachment hearings and -
* held secret sessions and then Schiff issue press statements what he liked and not always what the witnesses In fact said,
* made deductions from presumptions and personal thinking of what the witnesses think personally about what happened and then claimed that it was in fact what happened;
* did not allow the Republicans to call witnesses and intervened in answering of questions asked by RP members;
* got legal council from three legal experts with close ties to the Democrats and it came out that neither of the three studied the report of Schiff and gave no legal opinions on what witnesses said in the hearings chaired by Schiff and there legal arguments were missing;
* ignored totally what President Zelenski of Ukraine said abut the telephonic discussions and what was in fact in the telephonic discussion in July 2019 on which the whole impeachment effort was based.
From a legal perspective there was no requirement for Trump to participate in a legally flawed enquiry.
After then the Justice Department came up with two Articles of Impeachment -
* the first on the imagined political advantages of Trump in the 2020 election based on the enquiry into the activities of Biden in 2015-16 Ukraine and the fact that Biden's activities in the Ukraine was potentially of a criminal nature;
* the undermining/obstruction of Congress in respect of the Impeachment Enquiry by the House.
Fact is there was no legal basis for any of the two Articles. The first one was based on hearsay evidence and what the witnesses think might be the case with no proof that it actually happened. The second charge is meaningless since there is no such crime in the USA legal system and if the DP wanted to force witnesses to give evidence they could get a court order for that.
The issue must after vote in the full house go to the Senate and that is where a proper hearing under the chairmanship if the Chief Justice will be held. That would be fun and games to watch.
The Senate Hearing on the IG Report
The hearing supposedly dealt with FISA abuse by the FBI. The IG did not find proof that the issue of political bias was the basis for the FISA applications, but under questioning admitted that political bias could have played a role in what happened as to the FISA applications - however no staff member admitted such bias, However, the IG harshly dealt with the issue of the FISA applications. The fact that came out was that the Steele Dossier was used to get SIC ruling to deal with Page - a Trump election agent.
So what was the famous Steele Dossier. It was a Dossier compiled by a foreigner and paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to be used against Trump during the election. There was no verification of the report at all and the FBI used that report to undermine the President for two years after the election through the Mueller investigation even though that by then the origins of the report was already clear and the report itself was based on zero evidence.
Yesterday the IG Hearing in the Senate was a farce - not a single DP Senator dealt with the FISA issue and their total questioning was based on bias by Trump against the FBI. This while the FISA abuse issue was totally ignored.
Now imagine what would have happened if Trump used a foreigner to compile a report undermining the Clinton election campaign in 2016. Trump would been have impeached years ago - and deservedly so. However, there was no problem for the DP Senators with what the DNC and Clinton did in 2016. The problem was that the Steele Dossier was used as the bases for the appointment of Mueller as Special Council and the farce by the DP continues are even true up to the present.
Even though the IG indicated gross irregularities in the FISA process the main objective of the DP was to protect their protegees in the FBI and Justice Department. Comey said on CCN he did nothing wrong and the IG report vindicated him - but the IG in the Hearing said nobody was "vindicated" in his report.