POLITICS House Judiciary Committee Report: President Can Be Impeached For 'motives' Without Breaking Law
Discussion in 'Washington D.C.' started by Toby, Dec 8, 2019.
House Judiciary Committee Report: President Can Be Impeached for 'Motives' Without Breaking Law
The House Judiciary Committee released a report Saturday in which it argued that a president may be impeached for "illegitimate motives" even if his actions are "legally permissible."
The 52-page report, written by 20 members of the staff for the Democratic majority, attempts to provide a legal and constitutional basis for the Democrats' ongoing effort to impeach the president.
The report states: "The question is not whether the President's conduct could have resulted from permissible motives. It is whether the President's real reasons, the ones in his mind at the time, were legitimate."
That novel theory is only one of several questionable features of the report.
1. The report ignores all of the "expert" legal scholars who testified three days before. The report does not bother to cite any of the testimony from Wednesday's lengthy hearing, with three witnesses called by Democrats and one called by Republicans. That suggests the report was written well in advance of the hearing. The report does cite published works by one of the witnesses, Micharl Gerhardt, but ignores those of his writings unhelpful to their case.
2. The report uses the same misquote used in the hearing, and by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The Democrat staff cite President Donald Trump as saying Article II of the Constitution means can do whatever I want as president." As Breitbart News explained Friday, that is a misquote (backed by deceptively-edited video in the hearing), because Trump was talking specifically about his power to fire the Special Counsel (which he did not).
3. The report invents an absurdly broad standard for "bribery." The report, backed by selective and misleading claims about the Framers' intent, declares: "Impeachable bribery occurs when the President offers, solicits, or accepts something of personal value to influence his own official actions." That standard would implicate every elected official in the United States, all of whom accept campaign contributions in return for policy promises.
4. The report cites radical left-wing activists committed to impeaching Trump. The report cites "scholars" such as Zephyr Teachout, who is on the advisory board of a group called "Impeach Trump Now." It also cites Harvard's Lawrence Tribe, who declared in December 2016 that Trump's impeachment should "begin on Inauguration Day." It ignores contrary views, even by left-wing sources like Cass Sunstein, whom it quotes selectively (see below).
5. The report invents an absurdly broad "abuse of power" standard. Sunstein wrote in 2017 that "abuse of power" was, by itself, too vague: "Almost every American president has, on more than one occasion, passed the bounds of his power, in the sense that his administration has done something that it is not lawfully entitled to do." (They cite his book on impeachment, but ignore that point.) Notably, "abuse of power" is not in the Constitution.
6. The report actually defends the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and cites it as precedent. The Johnson impeachment is almost universally regarded as an error. Yet the report, after conceding that a president "cannot be removed" simply because of "unpopular policies," argues that Johnson should have been removed for exactly that, because he had "illegitimate motives." This astonishing claim, citing Tribe, is worth quoting in full:
7. The report bends over backwards to justify impeachment without any crime being committed. The report spends a great deal of space arguing that a president does not have to commit an actual crime to be impeached — a claim hotly debated among scholars. It notes that previous impeachments have included charges of "non-criminal" acts, but ignores the fact that no presidential impeachment has ever proceeded without any criminal acts alleged.
8. After saying crimes are not necessary, the report cites the criminal grand jury process.Immediately after arguing that impeachment is not a criminal process (see above), the report cites the criminal grand jury, in which the accused has few legal rights or protections, in an attempt to justify the House's bizarre impeachment process, in which President Trump — unlike Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton — has been denied basic legal rights.
9. The report claims that Trump has morerights than Nixon and Clinton did. That false claim ignores the fact that unlike his predecessors, Trump has not been allowed legal representation in the key fact-finding stage of the process, which Democrats — for the first time — moved to the secretive Intelligence Committee. Moreover, it ignores that Republicans have been denied the ability to object to witnesses called by the Democrat majority.
10. The report claims that hearsay evidence is sufficient to impeach the president. After noting that the usual rules of evidence do not apply in the House, the report ignores that the only witnesses with direct knowledge of the president's intentions testified that there was no "quid pro quo" regarding aid to Ukraine. One, Gordon Sondland, said he believed Trump wanted a "quid pro quo" for a White House meeting but had no direct knowledge to show it.
11. The report claims the president is "obstructing" Congress by appealing to the courts. The report claims that Trump can be impeached for denying requests for witnesses and documents, ignoring the fact that the president is raising constitutionally permissible defenses that await adjudication by the courts. Notably, the House itself has decided not to pursue key witnesses, apparently because it wants to rush to impeachment before election season.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...e-impeached-for-motives-without-breaking-law/
So the report basically backs up what we have been saying all along.. there is nothing there-there so move forward and impeach anyway.
House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Report Ignores 'Expert' Witnesses
The House Judiciary Committee's impeachment report Saturday on the constitutional and legal grounds for impeachment failed to cite any of the testimony from the "expert" witnesses who testified on Wednesday.
The report, signed by 20 members of the Democratic majority staff, appears to have been written in advance of that hearing. It was also prepared in advance of any evidentiary hearings in the committee, which are scheduled to begin Monday
The report includes a caveat that its view are those of the staff, not the committee's elected members.
One witness, University of North Carolina Law School professor Michael Gerhardt, is cited in the report, but the references are to his prior publications, not to his testimony in the hearing with two other Democratic witnesses.
Because it ignores the witnesses, notably the sole Republican-called witness, George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley (who is not, himself, a Republican), it fails to address the arguments they raised.
For example, the report argues that President Donald Trump can be impeached for "obstruction of Congress" for turning to the courts to prevent certain witnesses and documents from being provided to the House investigation.
As Turley argued on Wednesday:
I can't emphasize this enough, and I'll say it just one more time.
If you impeach a president, if you make a "high crime and misdemeanor" out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power. It's your abuse of power. You're doing precisely what you're criticizing the president for doing.
We have a third branch that deals with conflicts of the other two branches. And what comes out of there and what you do with it is the very definition of legitimacy.
The report fails to address that, and other objections.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...-impeachment-report-ignores-expert-witnesses/
joe bucker No participation trophy's here
George Orwell was was only 15 years off.
joe bucker, Dec 8, 2019
buffalobill and Toby like this.
Adam BullSchiffs Court 70+
years prior
buffalobill, kboomarang, Bubba74 and 1 other person like this.
This is a 1930's style Soviet show trial
the verdict is in, Trump is guilty
now (sadly for the DEms) they must find some "evidence" to have him removed from office
There is none and they know it so they must continue to make stuff up and violate the law (actual abuses of power)
What a sad and petty way to throw in the towel on the no evidence impeachment, and yet Biden's bragging admission video about his and Obama's dealings with Ukraine doesn't prove a thing, boy that Hillary loss really got to them.
Not to much footage of those trials since they were held in the basement of the Kremlin..
kboomarang said: ↑
KB you know all this is really not about the loss, well it is.
It is about covering their tracks really since if Hillary was elected none of what we are seeing of the Sewer known as the Deep State Swamp would have never made it to the public.
kboomarang likes this.