Impeachment: The Process Begins

@oralloy,

That's a novel approach.

@Brandon9000,

It's quite a stretch in my view.

But if it is in fact an acceptable interpretation, then Hillary needs to be prosecuted for the Steele dossier ASAP.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

I feel like we are stuck in a circle Brandon. Let's try again. This whole game of up pulling up Federal Statutes is irrelevant.

If the president abused his Constitutional power for personal benefit, then he can be impeached. The process of impeachment involves Congress in a process that is clearly defined in the Constitution. There are several historical precedents for people being impeached for abuse of power... it was one of the articles of impeachment in the case of Nixon.

You are making up a requirement that is not in the Constitution by claiming that for something to be a "High Crime or Misdemeanor" that it has to be outlined in a federal statute There is nothing to back up your claim, and throughout history this has never been true.

The Constitution is clear. It is the House of Representatives that has the sole power to decide if the President's misbehavior is a "high crime or misdemeanor". And then the Senate will vote to convict.

That's what the Constitution says. To all the liberals who are arguing over federal statutes, you are being equally silly. This is a completely irrelevant tangent.

Well, saying that words written in the Constitution don't exist isn't a very good argument. It lists very specifically the permissible grounds for impeachment:

1. Treason - certainly a crime
2. Bribery - presumably only when a crime and not giving your kid $5 if he gets a A in a class.
3. or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors
You can say that high crimes don't need to be crimes, but that's nonsense. Also, the meaning of misdemeanor is a crime less than a felony.

Yeah, say it doesn't say what it says if that's all you've got.

Quote:

It is the House of Representatives that has the sole power to decide if the President's misbehavior is a "high crime or misdemeanor".

Well, they may claim that taking a nap qualifies as a bribery, treason, high crimes, or misdemeanors, but I would call that subverting the law. These are words that have definitions.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

You are wrong. The term "high crimes and miademeanors" has never had that definition. You are just making it up. It is pretty easy to see you are wrong with a simple look at history.

1. The term was defined by the people who wrote the Constitution. These same people wrote about what it means. See Federalist paper 65 which includes abuse of power.

2. There are several examples, including Nixon where federal officials were impeached for abuse of power.

3. Yrs the House of Representativas has the power to decide if something is impeachable.

You might not like it (this time) but that is what the Constitution clearly says.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are wrong. The term "high crimes and miademeanors" has never had that definition. You are just making it up. It is pretty easy to see you are wrong with a simple look at history.

1. The term was defined by the people who wrote the Constitution. These same people wrote about what it means. See Federalist paper 65 which includes abuse of power.

2. There are several examples, including Nixon where federal officials were impeached for abuse of power.

3. Yrs the House of Representativas has the power to decide if something is impeachable.

You might not like it (this time) but that is what the Constitution clearly says.

Your basic argument is that the Constitution doesn't say what it says. You are now asserting that "high crimes" don't have to be crimes. I'll stick with assuming that the words mean what they say. The word "crime" has a clear definition.

You are also arguing that the House has the power to decide what is impeachable regardless of whether it resembles the criteria listed in the Constitution for impeachment. No, they don't. They might be able to get away with it, but their actual responsibility is to obey the Constitution, and, in particular, to defend it from people who claim that it doesn't actually mean what it says.

What's next - claiming that when the 1st Amendment prohibits "abridging the freedom of speech," it doesn't actually mean speech?

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@Brandon9000,

Max is right. You're wrong. High crimes and misdemeanors has always been taken to be particularly egregious crimes not necessarily against some particular statue, but more serious. You for example are completely incapable of abusing the power of the presidency, since you are not president. The only person wgocan is th president, so there's no statue against it, but it fits the high crime part of it. Clearly the misdemeanor part of it doesn't mean the prez jaywalking across Pennsylvania Ave would be subject to impeachment. It's up to the House to decide if the things a prez is accused of are serious enough to impeach. They have the say.

1 Reply

@Brandon9000,

I am stating that abuse of power is a crime (whether there is a statute or not). Trump is being accused abusing his power for personal political benefit. This is a crime in the minds of most Americans.

Not only is your argument legally wrong. It is a political losing argument.

You are basically arguing that the president can abuse the power of his office without facing any consequences.

This is an awful message for the Republicans to stand behind.

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@maxdancona,

When Democrats are suspected of serious wrongdoing, it isn't an abuse of power to try to investigate that wrongdoing.

Only someone who thinks that Democrats should be above the law would call that an abuse of power.

And if "trying to use investigations to damage your opponents" is an abuse of power, then the entire Democratic Party is guilty of abusing their power, because that's exactly what they've been doing to Trump non-stop since the day he took office.

The Democrats are falsely accusing Trump of the very abuses that the Democrats themselves are guilty of.

1 Reply

I hear that the latest Republican idea is to (if the Democrats are foolish enough to impeach) begin the Senate trial a week before the Iowa Caucuses, and make it last until after the New Hampshire Primary, thereby preventing Sanders and Warren from campaigning in either state.

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@oralloy,

Not surprisingly you're missing the point, or obfuscating it. It's not the investigation, it's using the power of the office to deny badly needed military id to a client country by cutting off that aid and making it contingent on a witch hunt you want against a political rival . That's the abuse of power for your own political gain. That's the Trump way and it's un-American.

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@MontereyJack,

The only people here who are abusing their power to conduct witch hunts against their political rivals are the Democrats.

If this is truly a crime, then the Democrats are once again the criminals.

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@MontereyJack,

Complaining about military aid to Ukraine is pretty silly. When Russia invaded Ukraine, most progressives sided with Russia. And now progressives want to try to fool people into thinking that progressives actually care about Ukraine??

And not only that, but most of this military aid was denied to Ukraine under the Obama Administration. It is only because of Trump that Ukraine is receiving this military aid to begin with.

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Fact-checking Trump's claim that Obama gave Ukraine 'pillows and sheets'
Holmes Lybrand
By Ryan Browne and Holmes Lybrand, CNN

Updated 1:50 PM ET, Thu September 26, 2019

(CNN)During a joint press conference Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump took a shot at former President Barack Obama, claiming that while the Trump administration provided Ukraine with "anti-tank busters," Obama simply sent "pillows and sheets."

Facts First: Trump is being hyperbolic here. While the Obama administration was criticized for its refusal to provide lethal assistance to Ukraine, it did provide more than $100 million in security assistance, as well as a significant amount of defense and military equipment.

By March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75 million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles.
Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks."

While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military. Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar.

The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, something long sought by Kiev.

1 Reply

@neptuneblue,

Quote:

The Trump administration did approve the provision of arms to Ukraine, including sniper rifles, rocket launchers and Javelin anti-tank missiles, something long sought by Kiev.

Yep. Exactly.

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@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

Not surprisingly you're missing the point, or obfuscating it. It's not the investigation, it's using the power of the office to deny badly needed military id to a client country by cutting off that aid and making it contingent on a witch hunt you want against a political rival . That's the abuse of power for your own political gain. That's the Trump way and it's un-American.

The issue of rampant corruption in Ukraine is both real and fairly longstanding. Indeed then VP Biden was given the task of addressing it. Unfortunately it is increasingly clear that he acquired the disease he was sent to cure. Biden is a self defeating candidate who presents nearly zero threat to Trump in an election and Trump knows it. It is simply the construct of frantic Democrats to see Trump's communication as some sort of election ploy.

The truth involves many other factors as well, Trump did not explicitly make the military aid conditional on Ukraine's pursuit of corruption, though based on the facts such an action would not only be justified but also would be well in keeping with the longstanding practice of U.S. governments with many other countries - indeed such actions are the rule, not the exception, by all donor countries.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

The truth involves many other factors as well, Trump did not explicitly make the military aid conditional on Ukraine's pursuit of corruption...

That's right. Trump explicitly made the military aid conditional on Ukraine's pursuit of Hunter Biden, the son of Trump's political rival, Joe Biden. Trump's political allies are alleging that this is not an impeachable action.

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@InfraBlue,

InfraBlue wrote:

Trump's political allies are alleging that this is not an impeachable action.

Rightly so. The idea that it is an impeachable offense to investigate Democratic crimes is Orwellian -- even more so when you consider that these Democrats are abusing their power to try to launch bogus investigations into their own rivals.

2 Replies

@oralloy,

Boy when you swallow some belief there are no codicils are there?

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@oralloy,

Your opinion is duly noted.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

Trump explicitly made the military aid conditional on Ukraine's pursuit of Hunter Biden, the son of Trump's political rival, Joe Biden.

Something that cannot be proven. Shocked

Give it up, they have as good as lost, Trump wins.

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Impeachment: The Process Begins

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