"I heard!"

In National Review, Victor Davis Hanson scoffs at the whistleblower impeachment hearsay.

After nearly three years of this, we know the delivery system that ensues. Along with the sensationalized initial media hype, the promised “smoking gun” leak usually follows. But when the “overwhelming” evidence or “walls are closing in” documents are released, there is no criminal act to be found other than occasional art-of-the-deal bluster from Trump. And then on to the next crude coup attempt, since the line of wannabe Glen Simpsons, Bruce Ohrs, Andrew McCabes, and John Brennans seems endless.

...Any president has a perfect right to tell a foreign head of state and recipient of major U.S. aid that his corruption-plagued country has played a destabilizing but still murky role in recent American elections and in scandals that have affected the American people, and in particular the current president of the United States — and that it would be a good thing to get to the bottom of it.

Americans, left and right, would like to know the exact nature of Ukrainian-Russian interference and the degree, if any, to which CrowdStrike played a role in the Clinton-email imbroglio and why CrowdStrike (which analyzed the server that the DNC refused to turn over to the FBI) was apparently exempt from FBI investigation.

That Biden is now a Democratic front-runner does not provide immunity or excuse the fact that he was vice president of the United States tasked with Ukrainian affairs when his problem-plagued son, without any energy or foreign-policy experience, made a great deal of money for apparently nothing more than lending his Biden name to benefit a corrupt Ukrainian-Russian-related company. Nor should we overlook that Joe Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid — $1 billion — to Ukraine if it did not within six hours fire the too-curious prosecutor who was looking into the mess. And that prosecutor was fired. And that $1 billion in aid was not cut off. And Hunter Biden was no longer a target of any investigation. And he made a great deal of money.

The VP emeritus had the temerity, in Biden signature mock-heroic style, to boast of his intervention — he was impressing a foreign-policy symposium with his seasoned clout. “Well, son a b****, he got fired,” he bragged, prompting laughter from symposium attendees. Note that he was also emphasizing his own absolute exemption from any legal repercussions for such a blatant and explicit quid pro quo gambit.

...These episodes are not just designed to drive down polls or crowd out coverage of real achievement on economic growth, energy development, low unemployment, judicial appointments, deregulation, tax reform, and clarity overseas on Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. They are veritable coups aimed at aborting a presidency before a scheduled election, either out of unhinged hatred for Trump or out of desperation that an extremist counter-agenda, as witnessed in the first three Democratic debates, is apt to turn off most voters.

And there is a monotony in the scripts. So often we hear from a whistleblower who claims to have a superior moral conscious — “higher loyalty” Jim Comey, or the anonymous “Resistance” fighter who wrote the 2018 New York Times op-ed, or boy scout Andy McCabe forced to initiate a veritable coup to surveille and catch the president in an incriminating statement, or an outraged John Brennan or James Clapper or Bruce Ohr coming forward with “damning” information on Trump. Then the requisite Democratic senate staffer or administrative-state bureaucrat takes action, often with the help of some congressional official, Fusion GPS factotum, or Lawfare busybody, but not before the accusation is leaked and blared on cable news, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, etc. and billed as the magic bullet that will finally bring down the Trump monster.

...When the entire nature of the whistleblower, his handlers, and his media enablers is fully known, when attention turns, as it already has, to Biden’s real legal exposure, two things will follow:

Biden will get snappy, befuddled, and indignant to questions, to the extent he will even entertain them — all the while losing ground to Elizabeth Warren. Trump will be the eventual beneficiary of Warren’s more likely and more alienating candidacy. And, even if impeached, Trump will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as growing stronger for enduring ever shriller and more monotonous attacks.

Read more here.