Arguments that there was adequate "proof" to open an impeachment of Trump but not Biden seems befuddling.
What evidence did the Democrats have? How about none?
Somewhat ironically you have to go back to the first Trump impeachment to grasp the true hypocrisy of this. While many people do not remember (or seem to care) why Trump was impeached by the House, the reality is that it had to do with Ukraine, Joe Biden, and the firing of the State prosecutor Shokin.
The Democrats declared that Trump needed to be impeached because he committed an abuse of power by asking Zelensky to look into allegations that the firing of the state prosecutor Shokin was corrupt. What Trump had learned was that Shokin was not fired for cause, but was fired at the insistence of Joe Biden. It was also believed that that corrupt Ukrainian companies tied to Hunter Biden and others might have been involved with the ask. Now without going down the rabbit hole of whether or not it is politically prudent for Presidents to ask other Presidents to look into these sorts of things, there is certainly no laws against it. In fact, I think most would argue that if one or our allies had intelligence that suggested corrupt American companies were bribing international officials that we would want to be told about it and that we might actually want to look into it.
So to add some flame to the fire, the Democrats insisted that Donald Trump was threatening to hold up $400 million in Aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelensky into announcing an investigation. Of course the actual phone call between Trump and Zelensky involved no mention of any aid being associated with the request. No threat was issued. Not even an implied threat. What Democrats had was the head of the Office of Management and Budget calling on all foreign aid to be reviewed before was sent out. This order was made around the same time as this particular phone call. This was seen by Democrats as enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trump must have ordered Michael Duffy (head of OMB) to freeze the Ukrainian aid to put pressure on Zelensky.
But they had the entire transcript to the phone call as well as witnesses who inexplicitly listened in on the call. They also had all of the communication records of both Trump and Duffy. What they did not have was any evidence that Trump either threatened Zelensky or ordered a freeze on Ukrainian aid. Zelensky himself suggested that he got the aid about when it was expected and that he never was given any impression that the aid was not coming or that it was tied to any investigation or announcement of said investigation.
To say there was no tangible proof of the allegations would be an understatement.
The worst of it was that Donald Trump would have known from his own State Department that Shokin was considered a good prosecutor who was making good progress on the corruption issues in Ukraine. The allegations that he was fired at the insistence of the then VP Joe Biden would have been 100% accurate based on what we now know. To this day I am not sure that it was "wrong" of him to make Zelensky aware of this and to possibly even suggest an investigation on their end. Again, I would think if the shoe was on the other foot that we would have wanted to know if American companies were involved in bribing foreign officials.
What we had at the end of the day was a pissing match between Administration officials and the House impeachment committee as many officials did not want to be pulled into the impeachment hearings. The committee kept demanding more and more witnesses, none of which was able to corroborate what was being alleged by Democrats and their own witnesses pushing the circumstantial conspiracy theory that there just had to be blackmail here. All they needed was that ever-elusive proof. The secret files so to speak. But to their dismay, nobody ever produced them.
Then they voted to impeach him anyways.
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