Renewable Revolution

SEP 30, 2019 OPINION|TD ORIGINALS



SNIPPET:

I’m not going to bury the lede: Donald John Trump, the 45th president of the United States, is going to be impeached. Not only that, but whether or not the GOP-controlled Senate convicts Trump of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” his presidency is drawing to a close. Unless a political deus ex machina comes to his rescue, he will not serve a second term.

Numerous actions and events have brought us to this impeachment precipice, virtually all of them initiated by Trump himself. He is the architect of his own demise, and there is no turning back.

As of Saturday, some 225 members of the House of Representatives were on record endorsing an impeachment investigation. Their ranks included independent Justin Amash of Michigan and Republican Mark Amodei of Nevada. The last high-profile House Democratic holdout, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, announced her support Friday. The total will only expand in the coming weeks.

Trump, for his part, appears increasingly exhausted, paranoid and incoherent, not unlike Richard Nixon in the final stages of Watergate. The president has taken to Twitter even more than usual, spewing vitriol and blurting out threats of revenge against his many presumed enemies.

For those who are unfamiliar with the procedure or who could simply use a refresher, impeachment is the constitutional mechanism by which a president, vice president or “civil officer of the United States” can be accused of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors” and removed from office upon conviction.

The specific provisions governing the process can be found in Article 1, Section 2 and Article 2, Sections 3 and 4 of the Constitution, which define the respective powers of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.

Together, the provisions establish a two-step process. As explained in a 2015 study, “Impeachment and Removal,” prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service: “First, a simple majority of the House impeaches—or formally approves allegations of wrongdoing amounting to an impeachable offense, known as articles of impeachment. The articles of impeachment are then forwarded to the Senate where the second proceeding takes place: an impeachment trial. If the Senate, by vote of a two-thirds majority, convicts the official of the alleged offenses, the result is removal from office. …” [Emphasis in original]

Although scores of federal officials have been the subject of congressional impeachment resolutions since the nation’s founding, the House has referred only 19 individuals to the Senate for impeachment trials—15 federal judges (including Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805), one senator, one cabinet member and two presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998-99. The Senate has conducted 16 impeachment trials, convicting eight lower-court judges. The rest were acquitted.

Nixon, whose name is most often associated with impeachment, was never formally impeached. Rather than face certain conviction in the Senate, Nixon resigned before the full House could vote on three articles of impeachment passed by the Judiciary Committee in 1974.

As the accusatory body, the House has the authority to decide what constitutes an impeachable offense in any particular instance. The Constitution provides only general guidance, defining the grounds for impeachment as “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

While treason and bribery are clear enough, to grasp the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors”—the basis most commonly invoked over the decades and which will surely be cited against Trump—we have to look back to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

The Founding Fathers debated impeachment and the notion of high crimes and misdemeanors extensively at the convention. James Madison described impeachment as “indispensable . . . for defending the community [against] the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief magistrate.” George Mason argued, “No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above justice?” Benjamin Franklin quipped dryly that impeachment was preferable to the European method of displacing a king—assassination.

But of all the Founders, Alexander Hamilton is credited with defining the scope of impeachment. In Federalist (Paper) No. 65 (1788), Hamilton described the legal process as embracing not only overt criminal conduct, but also serious violations of the “public trust.”

True to Hamilton’s reasoning, over the course of our history, charges of high crimes and misdemeanors have been alleged for a wide array of wrongdoing, both criminal and noncriminal, including abuse of power, obstruction of justice, corruption, bribery and perjury.

No one, not even Nixon, is more deserving of impeachment than Donald John Trump. In 2015, while Trump was a presidential candidate, I warned of the dangers he posed to immigrants, the First Amendment, and civil rights and liberties in general. Soon after the election, I began writing about his inevitable impeachment.

The principal debate now among mainstream Democrats and progressives is no longer whether Trump should be impeached, but how extensive the articles drafted against him should be. Well before the Ukraine scandal erupted into public view last week courtesy of a whistleblower’s complaint, Trump was liable for a long laundry list of impeachable offenses. Among the many derelictions I have cited, Trump can credibly be accused of:

► Committing campaign finance violations by paying hush money to two women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, Karen McDougal and po rn star Stormy Daniels;
► Obstructing justice in connection with the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller;
► Defying congressional subpoenas;
► Using the presidency for personal economic gain;
► Abusing the pardon power to reward political allies;
► Attacking the press and the judiciary;
► Threatening to prosecute political opponents;
► Abusing emergency powers to build his border wall;
► Incarcerating undocumented immigrant children in concentration camps;
► Attempting to strip millions of Americans of health insurance;
► Promoting tax reform to benefit the super-rich;
► Gutting environmental regulations and pulling out of the Paris climate accord;
► Refusing to enforce the Voting Rights Act; and
► Curbing the use of federal consent decrees to counter police misconduct.


The mafia-like shakedown of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky—as reflected in the declassified “Memorandum of Telephone Conversation” (memcon) that details the July 25 conversation between the leaders—only adds fuel to an already raging fire.


Full article:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/donald-trump-is-finished/

Agelbert NOTE: Republican troll response in the comments at Truthdig: