Tom Brokaw: Democrats don't have 'the goods' on Trump

NBC News anchor emeritus Tom Brokaw knows something about impeachment investigations, having covered Watergate in 1973, and he contends the Democrats' current probe of President Trump is no Watergate.

In an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell to promote his book "The Fall of Richard Nixon," Brokaw said the Democrats lack "the goods" on Trump "with the same kind of clarity" the party did in the Nixon investigation, noted Ed Morrisey of HotAir.com.

Brokaw pointed out that the case against Nixon, whose resignation made an impeachment vote unnecessary, had bipartisan credibility, having been based on actual crimes.

"The big difference is ... they still don't have what you call 'the goods' on this president in terms of breaking the law and being an impeachable target for them," Brokaw said.

"They're going to start the process, but they don't have the same kind of clarity that the people who were opposed to Richard Nixon had because it was so clear that these were criminal acts that he was involved in," he said.

Morrissey noted that the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton was based on the crimes of perjury and obstruction of justice in court.

"In this case, House Democrats don't even have a core statutory crime, nor are they likely to find one in Ukraine-Gate, although they might find enough swampy behavior for a good election argument against Trump," he wrote.

Morrissey said that if Democrats had uncovered a truly serious crime, they probably could convince at least 20 Senate Republicans to convict and make Mike Pence president.

"The core problem is that Ukraine-Gate doesn't appear to involve an explicit statutory crime at all, but instead an alleged abuse of authority to gain political advantage over former Vice President Joe Biden," he wrote. "The House can decide what constitutes an impeachable offense, but the Senate decides whether it's even worthy of a full trial, let alone a removal."

Morrissey said that without "the goods," the Democrats are conducting "an empty partisan exercise with even less credibility than Clintongate."