The silence from the office of U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson on recent events at the federal level has been deafening.

The president’s decision to pull out American troops and create a space for a Turkish assault on the Kurds in Syria has cost hundreds of lives and forced at least 160,000 people to flee their homes. Islamic State backers, once guarded by the Kurds, have escaped from internment camps. But, silence from the office of G.T. Thompson.

Soviet-born business associates of Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are arrested for running a shell company just to hide political contributions. Silence from the office of G.T. Thompson.

But, the silence has been broken. In the Oct. 23 issue of The Era, Thompson announced he was part of a Republican group alleging the impeachment inquiry is illegal. A review of history does indeed reveal this impeachment investigation is unusual. Older readers will remember both the Watergate incident and the Clinton impeachment.

The discovery phase, which we are in now, is like a grand jury. The same procedure for interviewing witnesses occurred in both previous impeachments. The difference was that the discovery phase was conducted by special prosecutors such as Archibald Cox and Ken Starr.

But in this Ukraine affair, U.S. Attorney General William Barr failed to thoroughly investigate the whistleblower complaint and appoint a special prosecutor. Congress is now faced with the task of conducting the discovery phase and the job of the special prosecutor. When the U.S. House convened in 1789, it established an early set of select committees, such as Rules and Ways and Means, to structure the legislative process, including investigations.

Pete Palumbo, Bradford