“Abuse of Power Is Not a Crime”: The Epitome of Ignorance
It’s hard to imagine what thoughts shot through the minds of the collective Republican establishment when the president’s former acting attorney general made this statement earlier today. One would have to speculate the following: If this is the best defense we can muster, Trump’s toast. Abuse of power is what impeachments are generally about; it’s what lay at the core of the cases against both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.
All Trump’s supporters in congress are certainly not folding their tents all at the same time, but defending a man on whom scandals are raining down on a daily basis, and propping him up with pseudo-legal bull**** is looking really untenable at this point.
From “Law and Crime“:
Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars, described Whitaker’s comments as “the epitome of ignorance.”
“Matt Whitaker’s statement that ‘abuse of power is not a crime’ is the epitome of ignorance – ignorance of the Constitution, ignorance of the purposes and history of the Impeachment Clause, ignorance of America’s history, ignorance of the law,” Tribe told Law & Crime. “Impeachable offenses, which the Constitution quaintly calls ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ are offenses against the nation and its Constitution, not necessarily violations of criminal statutes.”
Tribe, who thoroughly explores the constitutional foundation for impeachment in his 2018 book “To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” … said Whitaker’s argument was entirely without merit.
Tribe clarified that the criminality of a president’s conduct is not a determinative factor when evaluating whether that conduct constitutes an impeachable offense.
“Lots of crimes, like tax evasion, aren’t impeachable. And lots of impeachable offenses, like using the power of the presidency to usurp Congress’s prerogatives, or shake down foreign allies by withholding congressionally appropriated military aid against their and our adversaries in order to enrich yourself or get reelected, aren’t ordinary crimes at all, but surely are ‘high Crimes’ in the constitutional sense,” Tribe continued. “Although as it happens in this instance Trump was indeed committing the federal crime of soliciting foreign help in an American election.”
Looking forward, Tribe said Trump’s abuses of power have already provided a sufficient constitutional basis for his removal from office.
“If the House impeaches Trump, as now seems certain after the testimony of William Taylor yesterday, it will do so through Articles of Impeachment that leave no doubt how this president violated his oath, abused his power, and betrayed the nation,” Tribe said, adding, “and he’ll have ample opportunity to defend himself in the Senate trial that will follow.”
Speaking for the majority of Americans, and a steadily rising one at that, he really is toast. It’s time for this nightmare to end.
Craig,
Er, remind me again how many times since 2015 have you claimed “Trump is toast” ?
What you dismiss as ” pseudo-legal bull****” ” is correctly called the US Constitution.
As usual, you have taken former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s remarks out of context.
Matthew Whitaker was speaking in the context of simply claiming someone is “abusing power” isn’t evidence of any crime.
Thus “abuse of power”, without underlying evidence of a crime, isn’t a “crime”.
“What evidence of a crime do you have? So the Constitution—abuse of power is not a crime.”
Had you bothered to actually listen to the full context, instead of gleefully applying selective hearing,you would have heard his explanation.
MW . “Let’s fundamentally boil it down,The Constitution is very clear that there has to be some pretty egregious behavior to warrant an impeachment trial.
“But, here the Democrats cannot tell the American people what this case is even about.”
“The articles of impeachment against former President Bill Clinton specifically laid out gross abuse of presidential power charges. Richard Nixon was also looking at three articles of impeachment—one of which was for abuse of power, with solid evidence of an underlying crime, before he resigned as president”.
Since the publication by the media of Laurence H. Tribe’s observations, he has retracted his criticism of Matthew Whitaker, acknowledging he had not understood the context.
(Sigh) But. i guess you’ll repeat and repeat the inaccurate version, since it’s what you want to hear.
If the Constitution stated that anything which offended the sensitivities of the Washington elite, the Democrats, or leftist media was a crime worthy of impeachment, well then President Trump is certainly guilty !
But of course the Constitution doesn’t say any such thing. What it does is it makes very clear that except in very special circumstances, as an emergency measure only, the task of considering fitness of a President for office is the sole prerogative of the US voter at the ballot box.
Yesterday, House Republicans stormed a closed-door “secret” hearing breaking up the deposition of a top Defense Department official who was testifying about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
The GOP legislators demand to to be present to ensure the witness was not intimidated, bullied or coached.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) immediately scuttled out of the basement room selected as a private and secure hearing room where secrecy could be assured,he left with the witness(Laura Cooper) shielding her from the GOP legislators questions, and ordered her to say nothing.
TRENDING:
Donald Trump Impeachment Syria
TheHill.com
Republicans storm closed-door hearing to protest impeachment inquiry
By Mike Lillis,Rebecca Klar and Olivia Beavers – 10/23/19 11:40 AM EDT
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“We crashed the party,” said Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Calif.), a member of the Oversight and Reform Committee, one of three House panels leading the impeachment probe.
“It’s unprecedented, and possibly unconstitutional, for voting members of Congress to be denied access to see what’s happening behind these closed doors, in a basement room where they’re trying to impeach the President of the United States with a one-sided set of rules, and coached or coerced witnesses.”
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) claims Schiff threaten him and other GOP members with ethics violations and would “smear them also” , if they interfered with his conduct of “his” investigation.
Secret hearings, paranoia, coerced witnesses, all sounds a very familiar……
On Tuesday, November 3, 2020, the US people decide who will be the next US President. The Constitution doesn’t allow for the congress to decide the people got it wrong, and they can remove him at their whim.
Your real fear, like those of your fellow democrats, is Donald J Trump will be return with an increased majority in 2020!
What you haven’t been able to understand, or accept, is the will of your fellow Americans at the ballot box. In your arrogance you assume you know better, and like spoiled children, refuse to accept the decision and play by the rules.