Why the House logic is a danger to all future Presidents.
The Editorial Board, WSJ <
>
Democratic House Impeachment Managers walk to the Senate Chamber on Day 2 of the Impeachment of President Donald Trump, Washington, D.C., Jan. 21. Photo: Douglas Christian/Zuma Press
As House managers make their impeachment case, many Americans will dismiss it all as a partisan effort that hasn’t persuaded the country and will die in the Senate. They have a point. But the precedents that Democrats are setting could live on, so forgive us if we explain how dangerous the House’s impeachment logic is to future Presidents and the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Especially pernicious is the new House “corrupt purposes” standard for removing a President from office. The House managers don’t assert that any specific action by President Trump was an abuse of power or a violation of law. They don’t deny he can delay aid to a foreign country or ask a foreign leader to investigate corruption. Presidents do that all the time. Instead they assert in their first impeachment article that Mr. Trump is guilty of “abuse of power” because he committed those acts for “corrupt purposes.”
As an aside here, we should repeat that a President doesn’t have to break a specific law to commit an impeachable offense. Mr. Trump’s lawyers are wrong on this point. Presidents were accused of breaking specific laws in America’s three previous impeachments. But under the Constitution a President can commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” if he commits non-criminal acts that exceed his executive authority or if he refuses to execute the law.
But this means committing specific acts that are impeachable in and of themselves. Examples might be deploying U.S. troops against political opponents, or suspending habeas corpus without Congressional assent. (Lincoln received a Congressional pass in wartime.)
House Democrats are going much further and declaring that Mr. Trump’s acts are impeachable because he did them for “personal political benefit.” He isn’t accused of corruption per se. His Ukraine interventions are said to be corrupt because he intended them to help him win re-election this year. In other words, his actions were impeachable only because his motives were self-serving.
Think about this in the context of history and as a precedent. Every President has made foreign-policy decisions that he thinks may help his re-election. That’s what President Obama did in 2012 when he asked Dmitry Medvedev to tell Vladimir Putin to ease up on missile defense until after the election. Mitt Romney was criticizing Mr. Obama for being soft on Mr. Putin, and Mr. Obama wanted a political favor from the dictator to help him win re-election.
Was Mr. Obama’s motive also corrupt and thus impeachable? We can guess what Mr. Romney thought at the time, but he didn’t say Mr. Obama should be impeached. He tried to defeat him at the ballot box.
As 21 Republican state attorneys general explained in an important letter to the Senate on Wednesday, “It cannot be a legitimate basis to impeach a President for acting in a legal manner that may also be politically advantageous. Such a standard would be cause for the impeachment of virtually every President, past, present, and future.”
The AGs add that the “House’s corrupt motives theory is dangerous to democracy because it encourages impeachment whenever the President exercises his constitutional authority in a way that offends the opposing political party, which is predisposed to view his motives with skepticism and motivated by its own motives to regain that very office.”
Some sages dismiss this argument as slippery-slope alarmism that won’t come to pass. Their belief is that Mr. Trump is uniquely a threat to constitutional order and a future Congress wouldn’t apply the same logic to a more conventional President. Others want to make impeachment more routine as a check on presidential power.
This is wishful thinking. Once unleashed, the corrupt motives theory will become a temptation whenever a President is disliked and down in the polls. The mere threat of common impeachment will make Presidents much more beholden to Congress.
With this in mind, the Republican AGs advise the Senate to “explicitly reject” the House’s legal theory. This might take the form of a Senate resolution at the time of acquittal. The crucial point is to reject impeachment as a regular tool of partisan punishment, reserving it for genuine cases of presidential abuse.
<
>
(AP)
I don’t know whether this is accurate or not. But the prospect of the impeachment trial going on for months, maybe past November, is disturbing could cause Trump’s defeat in the November elections.
There seem to be six Republican Senators who are wavering on the question of calling witnesses, or at least calling Bolton as a witness. This is a matter of serious concern:
I am very concerned that the impeachment trial is going badly for Trump. The media claims that the Republican Senators are weakening on the question of calling witnesses to the trial, and enough of them may “defect” and vote for the Democratic resolution to call witnesses. Once that happens, the trial will go on and on, probably past November.
His defense team is doing an awful job. Ken Starr was a wet noodle. Very out of breath. Probably in poor health.
Even without a vote to call witnesses, the trial is likely to go on for at least another month. The rules allow each senator to ask one question to both sides. All fifty Dems will certainly ask their full quota of questions as a part of their filibustering strategy. And so will some of the Republicans. That will last at least a month.
Also troubling is that the entire media is declaring Trump to be guilty and really whooping it up against him. Even Fox News, the only major Republican network, is very “even handed.”” Some of Fox’s commentators are very anti-Trump, like Chris Cuomo and Tucker Carlson. And Fox has been interviewing the Democratic accusers such as Schiff and Schumer at as much length as the MSNB, and covering their press conferences at as much length, too.
In the end, I don’t think they will get enough Republicans to vote to convict to get a conviction. But some Republicans will probably defect, because they are concerned about the hostile press coverage, which may endanger their chances for reelection. If the Dems gett a majority, even a small majority, of votes for conviction,it will weaken Trump and hurt his chances for reelection. And it will distract attention away from his Deal of the Century.