Tag: impeachment

‘Case closed’: Robert Reich explains why the Constitution’s framers would have found Trump impeachable

AlterNet logoTrump has asked a foreign power to dig up dirt on a major political rival. This is an impeachable offense.

Come back in time with me. In late May 1787, when 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to begin debate over a new Constitution, everyone knew the first person to be president would be the man who presided over that gathering: George Washington. As Benjamin Franklin put it, “The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” but “Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.”

Initially, some of the delegates didn’t want to include impeachment in the Constitution, arguing that if a president was bad he’d be voted out at the next election. But what if the president was so bad that the country couldn’t wait until the next election? Which is why Franklin half-joked that anyone who wished to be president should support an impeachment clause because the alternative was assassination.

View the complete November 5 article by Robert Reich on the AlterNet website here.

218 House lawmakers now support an impeachment inquiry on Trump

Washington Post logoThe White House released a rough transcript Wednesday of President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling him to work with U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr to investigate the conduct of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The administration transmitted the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress before the vote, and members of the Intelligence committees had a chance to review it.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Trump dismissed Democrats’ move to open an impeachment inquiry against him, denied that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and suggested that the White House should release even more records of his communications.

The July 25 call has been the subject of intense scrutiny since The Washington Post reported last week that a whistleblower had come forward with concerns about the matter.

View the complete September 25 article by Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top.

George T. Conway III is a lawyer in New York. Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University, previously served as the acting solicitor general of the United States.

Washington Post logoAmong the most delicate choices the framers made in drafting the Constitution was how to deal with a president who puts himself above the law. To address that problem, they chose the mechanism of impeachment and removal from office. And they provided that this remedy could be used when a president commits “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

That last phrase — “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” — was a historical term of art, derived from impeachments in the British Parliament. When the framers put it into the Constitution, they didn’t discuss it much, because no doubt they knew what it meant. It meant, as Alexander Hamilton later phrased it, “the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Simply put, the framers viewed the president as a fiduciary, the government of the United States as a sacred trust and the people of the United States as the beneficiaries of that trust. Through the Constitution, the framers imposed upon the president the duty and obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and made him swear an oath that he would fulfill that duty of faithful execution. They believed that a president would break his oath if he engaged in self-dealing — if he used his powers to put his own interests above the nation’s. That would be the paradigmatic case for impeachment.

View the complete commentary by George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Accuses Mueller of a Personal Vendetta as Calls for Impeachment Grow

COLORADO SPRINGS — President Trump lashed out angrily at Robert S. Mueller III on Thursday, accusing him of pursuing a personal vendetta as Mr. Trump sought to counter increasing calls among Democrats for his impeachment.

A day after Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, spoke out for the first time and refused to exonerate the president, Mr. Trump dismissed the Mueller investigation as hopelessly tarnished and expressed aggravation that he could not shake allegations of wrongdoing that have dogged him since the early days of his administration.

“I think he is a total conflicted person,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Mueller before flying to Colorado to deliver the commencement address at the Air Force Academy. “I think Mueller is a true Never Trumper. He’s somebody that dislikes Donald Trump. He’s somebody that didn’t get a job that he requested that he wanted very badly, and then he was appointed.”

View the complete May 31 article by Peter Baker and Eileen Sullivan on The New York Times website here.

Amash defends call for Trump’s impeachment, says Congress ‘has a duty to keep the president in check’

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Rep. Justin Amash, the sole congressional Republican to call for President Trump’s impeachment, said Tuesday that the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III left him with no other option.

Defending his stance, Amash (Mich.) told supporters and opponents at his first town hall since his tweets angered Trump and other Republicans that Congress “has a duty to keep the president in check.”

“I’d do it whether it was a Republican president or a Democratic president. It doesn’t matter. You elected me to represent all of you,” Amash told hundreds of people crowded into an auditorium at Grand Rapids Christian High School.

View the complete May 28 article by David Weigel and John Wagner on The Washington Post website here.

Historian Who Predicted Trump 2016 Victory Says Impeachment Could Defeat Him

Allan Lichtman, a political historian who won plaudits for predicting President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory when most commentators disagreed, has a new warning for Democrats: Don’t write off impeachment.

Lichtman has developed a system for predicting the presidential winner of elections that disregards polls or the country’s demographics.  Instead, he makes a prediction based on 13 true/false questions about the party that holds the presidency, which he calls the “Keys to the White House.”

“[T]he keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House,” he told the Washington Post in September 2016, while predicting a Trump win. “And if six or more of the 13 keys are false — that is, they go against the party in power — they lose. If fewer than six are false, the party in power gets four more years.”

View the complete May 28 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

Trump says he doesn’t want to be impeached, but he sure acts like it

‘I don’t think anybody wants to be impeached,’ president says

ANALYSIS — Does President Donald Trump actually want to be impeached by House Democrats? Many of them think so, citing his aggressive and defiant behavior. He says he doesn’t.

“I don’t think anybody wants to be impeached,” Trump said Thursday during another wild, impromptu Q&A session with reporters. But that comment came after he ignored subpoenas, harshly criticized House Democrats and blocked attempts to perform oversight — which, in turn, followed a slew of legally and ethically questionable actions laid out by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Collectively, Trump’s words and deeds beg the question: If he did want to get impeached, what would he be doing that he’s not doing now?

View the complete May 29 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Trump goes scorched earth against impeachment talk

President Trump’s scorched-earth offensive against congressional Democrats this week is a clear sign he sees his path to reelection as being paved through battles with his opponents more than collaboration.

The president’s decisions to walk out of a White House meeting on infrastructure and to belittle and poke Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with personal attacks are likely to excite Trump supporters who like nothing more than his confrontations with the establishment.

“Donald Trump is a fighter — there’s no ambiguity about that — and he’s going to fight for what he believes in,” said Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign and transition aide. “He’s going to show he will do what’s right for the taxpayers and the voters, but all the Democrats want to do is talk about impeachment.”

View the complete May 25 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Republicans secretly support Trump’s impeachment in private ‘conversations’ — but no one wants to go public: Dem senator

Appearing on CNN’s “New Day,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) confided to host Alisyn Camerota that multiple Republican senators agree with Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) that Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses, but are afraid to go public at the moment.

Following a weekend filled with talk of Amash’s anti-Trump apostasy, Coons was asked by the host what GOP sentiment about Trump is like in the Senate.

“I was surprised to see a Republican congressman saying publicly what many are thinking privately,” Coons explained. “Those who have read the Mueller report cannot avoid the conclusion that the president and some of his advisers engaged in profoundly disappointing, reprehensible conduct that would rise to the level of obstruction of justice. “

View the complete May 20 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.