[BeaverFever]

$1:

Yes, Abuse of Power Is Impeachable

Why else did the framers create the power to impeach?

Noah Feldman
January 30, 2020, 4:00 AM GMT-7
Politics & Policy

By
Things that make the framers go “Hmmm ...”
Things that make the framers go “Hmmm ...”
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter. His books include “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President.”

Read more opinion Follow @NoahRFeldman on Twitter
As Republicans scramble to argue that they don’t need to call witnesses in President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, one argument seems to be gaining traction: that witnesses are irrelevant, because even if Trump did everything he’s accused of doing, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.

This argument isn’t merely wrong. It is the single most dangerous argument that any of Trump’s defenders have made during the entire impeachment process. If abuse of power isn’t impeachable, what is?

The strongest version of this argument has been made by Alan Dershowitz, who has insisted that the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” include only crimes found in the statute books, not abuse of power.


... Dershowitz’s view is so absurd that I don’t know of even one legal scholar who studies the Constitution who agrees with him. That includes Dershowitz himself, who in 1998 said (correctly) that impeachment doesn’t have to be for a crime.

... Dershowitz speciously says that since today’s courts do not recognize federal common law crimes, abuse of power can’t be impeachable. That’s literally laughable: When the framers wrote the Constitution, there were no federal statutory crimes, because there was no U.S. Code. So according to Dershowitz, the framers wrote an impeachment provision that did not allow them to impeach anyone.

What’s so dangerous about this perspective, however, isn’t only that it radically distorts the entire history and meaning of the constitutional practice of impeachment.

What makes it scary is that it amounts to the view that even if Trump extorted the president of Ukraine to force him to announce an investigation targeted at his leading political opponent, the Constitution doesn’t allow his removal. That would lead to a world where the president could break the democratic system by targeting his political opponents through the powers of his office.

Think about it. A president could ask the Department of Justice and the FBI to open criminal investigations against candidates running against him — through the exercise of his official duties as head of the executive branch and boss of the attorney general. He could use the power of the presidency to force the governments of other countries to open such investigations — which is exactly what Trump is alleged to have done. According to the view that abuse of power isn’t an impeachable offense, this would all be fine.

... To any unbiased observer, this conclusion should be obvious. Can Republican senators really say with a straight face that it is perfectly fine for a president to use his office to target his political opponent for criminal investigation during an electoral campaign? No.

The worst possible outcome for this impeachment process would be for Republicans to coalesce around the idea that Trump did everything he’s been accused of in the articles of impeachment, but had every right to do so under the Constitution. A democracy where that view holds sway among the majority of one branch of the legislature is a democracy in deep trouble.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... high-crime

$1:

Yesterday, in response to a detailed 111-page brief outlining the House of Representatives’ case for impeachment, President Trump’s legal team filed a six-page response. It is notable primarily for advancing an audacious and highly dangerous constitutional claim: that a president cannot be impeached for any abuse of power.

This argument been been floating around Republican circles for weeks, and received the endorsements of such luminaries as Matt Whitaker and Alan Dershowitz. But two previous letters by Trump denouncing impeachment — while deranged, incoherent, and dripping with monarchial impunity — have not gone so far as to advance this novel argument.

... According to its reasoning, a president can only be impeached for a literal criminal violation, the kind of crime for which you or I could be hauled off to the police station. He cannot be impeached for abusing his power. The first article of impeachment “fails on its face to state an impeachable offense,” his lawyers write. “It alleges no crimes at all, let alone high Crimes and Misdemeanors, as required by the Constitution. In fact, it alleges no violation of law whatsoever.” Trump’s lawyers do deny the facts laid out in the indictment, but they argue that even if Trump was guilty of every action of which he was charged, he cannot be impeached for it.

The first problem with this argument is that it rests on incorrect facts. At the time President Trump was withholding military aid to Ukraine, officials inside his administration worried that he was breaking the law by refusing to allocate spending that had been passed by Congress. But the legality had not been officially settled at the time, which is what allowed Trump’s supporters to insist that he had not broken any laws. But last Thursday, the Government Accountability Office formally ruled that withholding the aid did violate the law.

This ruling doesn’t mean Trump is a criminal who needs to be impeached. But given the weight his supporters have placed on the lack of a formal legal violation, it is quite significant. When you rest your defense upon a technicality, you’re in trouble when the technicality turns out to be technically wrong.

Second, as a historical matter, there is no evidence that impeachment was designed to deal solely with violations of federal law. The framers debated impeachment and the record suggests a broad range of concern, ultimately leaving the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” to Congress to decide. Alexander Hamilton defined it as “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Historically, less than one-third of impeachments of federal officials have charged a criminal violation.

... Finally, as a constitutional principle, the notion that a president cannot be removed for abusing his power, but can be removed for a criminal violation, however small, would turn impeachment into a ludicrously ill-fitting solution for the problem it was designed to solve. It implies Trump could not be impeached for promising to pardon anybody who murdered his political rivals, but could be impeached if he resold a mattress that was missing its tags.

Dershowitz has demonstrated the absurdity of the principle himself. In a 2018 book arguing against Trump’s impeachment, he suggested that Trump couldn’t be impeached even if he let Russia have Alaska. “Assume [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decides to ‘retake’ Alaska, the way he ‘retook’ Crimea,” argued the noted legal scholar. “Assume further that a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to ‘its’ original territory,” Dershowitz wrote. “That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.”

Trump’s lawyers are unlikely to emphasize this hypothetical scenario in their presentation to Congress. But it illustrates the size of the wormhole their theory would open up. The U.S. criminal code is designed primarily for ordinary citizens, not for presidents. It does not contemplate every way a corrupt, mentally unfit, or authoritarian chief executive could twist the powers at his disposal.

Trump believes profoundly that a president can use the government exactly as he sees fit. In his mind, “abuse of power” is an oxymoron. To charge him with with “abusing” the presidency makes no more sense than charging him with abusing the Trump Organization for personal gain. And now the authoritarian conviction that Trump believes as a matter of instinct has been sanctified as a formal legal theory, endorsed by presidential lawyers.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/ ... owitz.html

[N_Fiddledog]

CNN is shocked...shocked I tell you that the president will not be apologizing for his inevitable acquittal on non-criminal charges after an attempted coup impeachment by Democrats.

$1:

Gosh, that sounds so unlike him. The minds over at CNN are saying that President Trump, who has called both the Mueller investigation and Ukraine investigation witch hunts repeatedly and still insists the call with Ukraine’s president was “a perfect call,” is not expected to apologize after he’s acquitted by the Senate next week.

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/02 ... in-senate/

[N_Fiddledog]

In case you don't get the joke reference try this famous old viral one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

[Sunnyways]

Trump wouldn’t let Republicans use the best defence - that his wrongdoing didn’t rise to the level required for impeachment - until it was too late and they’d nearly all made fools of themselves telling tall stories for him, as well as refusing to see evidence that will emerge over time.

Clinton’s offences were less serious. I thought taking advantage of a young subordinate was worse than lying about it, and a grubby thing to do, but either way it wasn’t a major foreign policy matter concerning a country at war. The thing about Trump is he will definitely reoffend. His life story tells us that.

[Tricks]

JaredMilne JaredMilne:

I'm sorry for derailing the topic, but I was hoping Bart or somebody else in line with the Republican POV could explain why Bill Clinton was impeached back in the 1990s for having a private affair. Why was Congress even investigating that when so many previous Presidents got a free pass on breaking their marital vows?

What made Clinton so special?

He wasn't impeached for having an affair, he was impeached for committing perjury. Trump won't commit perjury because no one in his administration would let him any where near where he has to take an oath to tell the truth.

[BeaverFever]

Trump is so innocent he’s suppressed evidence, gagged witnesses, and refused to testify...just like an innocent person. And the Republican senate is so impartial it has refused to review evidence, call witnesses or request the accused to testify and have already decided the verdict before the hearings begin...just like an impartial body.

[CharlesAnthony]

As long as Sanders is off the campaign trail and forced to waste his time playing a part in the Impeachment2020(tm) theatrical production, all is good for the Clinton cock-sucking team.

[BeaverFever]

$1:

Trump administration reveals it's blocking dozens of emails about Ukraine aid freeze, including President's role

By Katelyn Polantz, CNN
Updated 6:45 PM EST, Sat February 01, 2020


Washington(CNN) The Department of Justice revealed in a court filing late Friday that it has two dozen emails related to President Donald Trump's involvement in the withholding of millions in security assistance to Ukraine -- a disclosure that came just hours after the Senate voted against subpoenaing additional documents and witnesses in Trump's impeachment trial, paving the way for his acquittal.

The filing, released near midnight Friday, marks the first official acknowledgment from the Trump administration that emails about the President's thinking related to the aid exist, and that he was directly involved in asking about and deciding on the aid as early as June. The administration is still blocking those emails from the public and has successfully kept them from Congress....

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEN ... id=US%3Aen

Because he’s soooooo innocent

Pro tip: Someone who claims they “have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide” and then goes to extraordinary lengths to hide everything probably has done something wrong.

[herbie]

To quote Bill Maher: Clinton's impeachment started with a blowjob, Trump's will end with one.

[N_Fiddledog]

Up Schiff’s Creek

$1:

Adam Schiff is starting to wear on his own. He may be the darling of leftwing cable news. But like a moth to a candle, the California congressman is sucked into the camera lights, without realizing how he is scorched and consumed. He hijacked the Democratic House impeachment effort and then did the same in the Senate. As the inspiration for the entire farce, he is the man most responsible for the ensuing damage to the country and his party.

Remember, Schiff wanted to rush through impeachment in the House before the holidays and, in part, was responsible for not getting proper authorization to issue subpoenas to witnesses. He then politicized the calling of witnesses, and selectively leaked testimonies taken in the House basement—only to whine about partisanship when he wanted to slow down the impeachment trial in the Senate. In other words, he objected to the same sort of partisanship that he had introduced into the inquiry.

But what will be the status of a post-impeachment Schiff, once the impeachment farce has lost its luster?

Thanks in part to Schiff, President Trump is polling more strongly now than when Schiff began the circus in September.

Thanks in part to Schiff, the erstwhile frontrunner and best Democratic presidential chance, Joe Biden, is left hemorrhaging from impeachment’s never-ending embarrassments about Hunter Biden.

Thanks in part to Schiff, Trump now enjoys more party solidarity than any recent Republican president.

Thanks in part to Schiff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been made irrelevant, and the formula that won the House in 2018 is ancient history.

Thanks in part to Schiff, Trump rallies have gone ballistic with about 40 percent of his audiences including Democrats and Independents.

In truth, Schiff’s ego was wetted by the rah-rah, but unhinged anchors of cable news, and he began to believe in his own anti-Trump godhead. But he has now lied so often and so blatantly, that almost anything he says is deemed automatically false.

Ironically, the best thing that could have happened to Schiff was this coming quick end to the farce, given that if had he testified before the Senate, he would have destroyed what little is left of his reputation. ...

More at Link

Pencil-Neck: The Bug-eyed Burbank Bolshevik

[N_Fiddledog]

And when he got together with tubby little, stomach stapled, Jerrold Nadler who some call the Oompa Loompa of the Democratic party they were a comedy team:

[N_Fiddledog]

So here's what happened.

The investigative portion of the inquiry was supposed to happen in the House. Shifty Schiff rushed through a large part of it in a secret basement. Any subpoenas were supposed to be issued during that investigation. All witnesses were supposed to be called in the House investigation.

But Shifty said it would all have to be done lickety split. They had no time to lose. They couldn't even let the President's attorneys cross examine the witnesses.

Nancy sent Shifty up to the Senate to be the face of the Senate portion as well, where they traditionally review the evidence produced by the House investigation. In the senate though, Shifty forgot he was in a hurry. Now he wanted to slow things down and re-investigate what should have been done in the house. He wanted more witnesses, more documents. Allowing him this would have taken the clown show well into the year, past the coming election.

The Senate wisely will tell Shifty Schiff, the Bug-eyed Boshevik and his Oompa Loompa, Jerry Nadler to load up their clown car and go home.