Impeachable Offenses

"Impeach the m...f..."
Representative Rashida Tlaib

The impeachment trial of President Trump is going on right now even though the charges brought by the Democratic managers seem flimsy at best. There are no charges of treason or bribery and no “high crimes and misdemeanors” have been alleged. The President has merely been accused of misuse of power, and obstruction of the efforts of the House of Representatives to impeach him.

Almost since day one of his Presidency, they have been looking for a reason to remove him from office. In May of 2017, Representative Maxine Waters of California called for his impeachment. On January 4 of 2019, long before the phone call to the Ukraine, newly elected Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib claimed that “we’re going to impeach the m----- f-----. “

Now it appears as if the Democrats have really lowered the bar for what constitutes offenses worthy of impeachment. Using their new standards, a number of actions of President Obama and his administrators were far more serious and worthy of prosecution.

Benghazi cover-up. President Obama’s response to the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi and the murder of our ambassador and other Americans would certainly call for an impeachment investigation under the new standards. The attack itself could have happened under any President but the cover-up that followed certainly was designed for President Obama’s political advantage. Republican Mitt Romney was running the President hard in the 2012 election campaign but didn’t press the Benghazi issue, much less call for his impeachment.

Speaking about the election of 2012, on an open mike President Obama asked the President of Russia not to make any waves before the election, and promised that he would have a freer hand to cut a deal with Russia after his re-election. Under the new standards, that would certainly have warranted an impeachment process. He asked a favor that would help him win re-election.

Resisting Congressional Subpoenas. During the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder repeatedly resisted Congressional subpoenas to the point where he was actually held in contempt of Congress. He was head of the Justice department but the Mueller investigation, and the Inspector General’s report clearly showed that it was one of the most partisan Justice departments in history.

Misuse of Power. Two agencies in the Justice department, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), formerly renowned for their probity and non-partisanship, became arms of the President and his party. The IRS targeted conservative political groups and organizations, and delayed applications for tax-exempt status. Only now are we learning of the shocking partisanship and dirty tricks of the FBI leaders appointed by President Obama.

Bribery. The Democrats have dropped charges of bribery against President Trump for lack of evidence. Nevertheless, under the new standards President Obama might have been impeached for bribery when he offered special deals to Senators and their States in order to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act early in his administration. In the old days, that would have been called politics but now, who knows?

Assassination. President Trump has been blamed for the targeted killing of an Iranian general in Iraq. Some have called it a violation of the law against political assassinations. When President Obama took out the notorious Osama bin Laden, the terrorist was not a military target and he presented no “imminent” danger. Where was the outcry then? Democrats lauded the President and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who for once enjoyed bi-partisan support. All agreed that it was good riddance.

In all of the above instances, no one ever suggested that President Obama be impeached. He had virulent opponents and critics but no one claimed that he was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that might initiate an impeachment investigation. With the impeachment of President Trump, the Democrats have opened a window that in the future could come back to haunt them and the country.

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COMMENT:

TD from CT offers these excellent comments.

When the Founders debated impeachment at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, they considered making maladministration an impeachable offence. After debate they decided this standard was dangerous and would bring a huge number of frivolous impeachments, so the idea was voted down.

You wrote: Now it appears as if the Democrats have really lowered the bar for what constitutes offenses worthy of impeachment. Yes, but what they are really doing is resurrecting the previously rejected standard of maladministration. They are redefining the legal standard of impeachment without amending the Constitution, on the fly. Is Trump guilty of maladministration? I'd say yes. And so what?

Here's my take on the rest:

Article Zero (the Russia investigation) - If the Mueller investigation had led to an article of impeachment, it should have been dismissed by the Senate upon arrival for lack of evidence.

Article One (Abuse of Power) - To my mind this one might have something to it. We certainly don't want Presidents directing criminal investigations for partisan reasons. The issue here is that it has to be proved that there was no probable cause for an investigation, we can't just assume it. I see zero effort being made to prove that an investigation of Hunter Biden was undeserved - after all, pursuing criminal investigations that [especially] involve foreign governments is part of a President's legal obligations, notwithstanding how crass or bungled (maladministered?) a President's execution of that obligation might be. Prove it to me and I'll support a conviction Until then...

Article Two (Obstruction of Congress) - Sorry, to my mind this is highly conditional. If any president is impeached for reasons other than high crimes and misdemeanors, then he or she would have a legal right to maintain the impeachment was unconstitutional and that obstruction was justified. Convict on Article One, and a conviction on Article Two can be justified. The reverse (convict on Two and not One) is totally indefensible.

Article Three (a fictional charge of illegal withholding of appropriated money to Ukraine) - There is at least one Federal statute that would seem to support this, and which was cited in that GAO report that said Trump broke the law. So, where is Article Three? Alan Dershowitz has opined that the application of such a statute to a foreign aid appropriation would be unconstitutional, since foreign affairs are almost entirely a Presidential responsibility. Also, it would seem that there are statutory exceptions, since such appropriations have been withheld by past Presidents. So it stands to reason that either the GAO report is a lie and the Democrats know it would not survive Senate scrutiny and are using it just to blow more smoke.. ###

Trump, Biden, and Ukraine

Ukraine is Weak

After two and a half years of relentlessly calling for the impeachment of President Trump, the Democrats have finally found an offense that might come under the heading of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” In a July 25 phone conversation with recently elected Ukrainian President Zelensky, President Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. In addition, he asked him to look into the activities of former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son involving corruption in the Ukraine itself.

As everyone must know by now, President Trump’s conversation was leaked to a House committee chaired by Democrat Adam Schiff. The outcry prompted the White House to release a transcript of the conversation. Here is what President Trump said in paragraph 7 of the transcript. 

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’ve surrounded yourself with some of the same people.

President Trump’s request “to do us a favor” came only after effusive personal and political compliments from the Ukrainian President who repeatedly expressed his willingness to cooperate with the United States in many matters.

I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.

Apparently, President Trump took these remarks about cooperation as an invitation to bring up the question of Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election that, of course, had occurred before Zelensky was elected.

The Ukrainian President responded that he was more than willing to look into the matter. 

Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. … I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.

Apparently pleased with these remarks, President Trump then raised a related issue about past Ukrainian corruption. 

Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. …The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

These are the two statements that have led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open the doors into a formal impeachment inquiry. The first charge can be dismissed out of hand. For two and a half years the Democrats have been clamoring for an investigation of foreign influence in the 2016 election. How can President Trump be blamed for now asking the recently elected Ukrainian President to investigate his country’s involvement? 

The second statement is more serious. Can the President of the United States ask a foreign government to investigate charges of political corruption in its country that might involve an American political opponent? Does that constitute a “high crime and misdemeanor?”

It is hard to doubt that President Trump had a political motive for seeking information on the activities of Vice-President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the Ukraine during the administration of President Obama. Nevertheless, why shouldn’t a President be able to seek information on what happened to more than a billion dollars of aid that the United States gave to Ukraine during the previous administration? 

Commentators have been complaining that President Trump has sat on almost a half billion dollars of aid to Ukraine for months but it is undeniable that during the Obama administration, Vice-President Joe Biden bragged about withholding a billion dollars of aid to Ukraine until that country dismissed a prosecutor investigating a company that employed Biden’s son as a director with a $600000 annual salary.

President Zelensky openly admitted that Ukraine’s prior government had been full of corruption. Why would it be wrong for President Trump to ask for an investigation to see if prior aid to Ukraine had been misused before releasing any more funds?

Although the Democrats in the House of Representatives will proceed with impeachment of President Trump, it would appear that the political damage to Joe Biden will be much greater. He was already losing ground in the polls and this latest revelation will be hard to deal with in upcoming debates. How will he explain that while he was in charge of investigating corruption in Ukraine, his own son received an annual salary of $600000 from the very company that was under investigation?

Ukrainian Scorecard

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Trump Impeachment Joke

Presidents Zelensky and Trump

At the end of my last post I engaged in a little conspiracy theorizing of my own. I admitted that I had been naive in hoping, after President Trump's inauguration over two and a half years ago, that people would look at the deeds of his administration and "not his words, or past behavior." Although opposition politicians and liberal commentators were claiming that the Trump Presidency would not last more than a few weeks, or that the country would go down the drain, I thought it best to wait and see. But now, 

  I have come to believe that the whole Russia collusion issue was just a smoke screen designed by the President’s opponents to drive any Trump achievements off the headlines. Now that the Mueller investigation has turned up nothing, the opposition has come up with other headline grabbing issues like Insanity, White Supremacy, and even Impeachment.

Sure enough, Impeachment has reared its head as a result of the leaking of a document from a whistleblower in the intelligence community about President Trump's conversation with the President of the Ukraine, himself a former popular comedian. Even though Progressives in the Democratic party have been clamoring for President Trump's impeachment from day one, Nancy Pelosi, their leader in the House of Representatives, had held out against impeachment. 

Apparently, she finally had to bow to the pressure. Immediately, the media had to jump on board. My local newspaper threw all caution to the winds with a long lead editorial supporting impeachment. I read the editorial and could not find among the verbiage any real grounds for impeachment. I wrote the following to the newspaper.

In a lengthy editorial the CT Post strongly supported the impeachment of President Trump. It claimed that since his inauguration the President has engaged in self-enrichment and obstruction of justice. I am a longtime subscriber but do not recall reading anything in the past two and a half years in the paper that details these charges.

Please provide the evidence for self-aggrandizement and obstruction of justice that amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” especially since the exhaustive Mueller report found none. 

The paper printed the letter today under another lengthy editorial that included some of the President’s misdeeds. Although the paper did not mention “high crimes and misdemeanors,” it did claim “there is already a mountain of evidence implicating President Donald Trump with conduct far outside the accepted norms of a democratic leader.”

Here is the mountain of evidence. 

For instance, the U.S. Constitution forbids federal officeholders from receiving any gifts or payments from foreign entities, but in the same phone call with the Ukrainian President we see evidence that Trump is in violation. “I stayed in the Trump Tower,” President Volodyrmyr Zelensky says of his last trip to the U.S. Since Trump never divested himself from his business and continues to profit from it, he is in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, according to many legal scholars, and it’s just one of countless examples on that score.”

Of course, not one of the countless examples is listed. Next, the editorial states that the Mueller report found “multiple occasions when the President apparently obstructed justice” but also fails to point out any of the occasions.

The mountain of evidence seems more like the proverbial molehill. A visiting dignitary checks into the Trump Tower and that represents a violation of the Constitution. I wonder if any foreign dignitaries put Heinz Ketchup on their hamburgers when visiting the country when John Kerry was Secretary of State. Would it have been a violation of the Constitution if President Trump had accepted an invitation from President Zelensky to watch him perform at a comedy club in Kiev?  

If the Democrats want to find self-aggrandizement in office holders, they just have to look in the mirror.  How did ex-President Obama, a former community organizer, manage to buy a $14 Million vacation home in trendy Martha’s Vineyard? How did former Vice-President Biden’s son manage to get a $50000 monthly salary from a Ukrainian gas company with no qualifications whatsoever? If President Zelensky ever returns to comedy, he probably has found plenty of material in American politics.

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