Impeachment redux

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Scooter
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Econoline
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Re: Impeachment redux

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McConnell: It Was Too Soon to Impeach Trump, Now It’s Too Late.
By Jonathan Chait

Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial has not even begun, but it is already a foregone conclusion. All but five Republican Senators voted to dismiss the charges on the grounds that a former president could not be impeached.

The legal merits of this position are questionable at best: The Senate has historically impeached and convicted former officeholders, and even many conservative legal analysts agree that Trump’s departure does not rule out a trial. But what is perhaps most amazing about the Republican position is that they are the very party that refused to try him before he left.

A crucial argument made by Trump’s defense team — and repeated by his Republican allies — against his first impeachment trial last year was that it was too soon. Democrats, warned Trump’s lawyer, were “asking you not only to overturn the results of the last election … they’re asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in the election that’s occurring in approximately nine months.”

This logic was widely embraced by the Republican Senate. The Senate couldn’t remove Trump before the election. That’s what the election was supposed to decide.

After Trump attempted to undo the election result and secure a second term, ultimately whipping up a mob to storm the Capitol, Republicans grew briefly angry. The House quickly voted to impeach Trump for his incitement. But two days after the insurrection, McConnell announced that the Senate would not begin an impeachment trial for at least another 11 days.

To be sure, the Senate could have convened immediately to begin the trial. It refused to because Trump’s allies wouldn’t allow it. The Senate would need unanimous consent to start the trial, and, as the Washington Post noted, “with a cadre of Trump-allied senators in the Republican conference, that unanimous consent is highly unlikely.” McConnell has gotten unanimous consent before, but there is no evidence he even tried this time.

The perfect moment for a trial happened to fall when the Senate was on vacation. What are you gonna do?

And now that Trump has left office, it is sadly too late to hold a trial. And so Republicans will not have to take a stand on whether Trump’s efforts to cancel a presidential election through a combination of subterfuge and violence amounts to a high crime. Before the election, it was too soon to convict him. Then there was a brief lame-duck period when it was neither too soon nor too late, but Republicans decided not to convene. Then they came back, and it was too late.

The Republican Establishment has suppressed its initial feelings of revulsion toward Trump’s mob and calculated that trying to make a clean break with the aspiring authoritarian president would alienate conservative voters. And even many of the conservative intellectuals who initially declared Trump’s crimes to be impeachable have decided the timing is wrong.

“We’ve said Mr. Trump’s actions — and failure to act to stop the riot as it unfolded — were an impeachable offense and urged him to resign,” reasons The Wall Street Journal editorial page, “But now he is out of office and no longer the ‘imminent threat’ that House Democrats said justified their rushed impeachment.” Notice how after the first sentence concedes the severity of Trump’s offense, the second sentence both accuses Democrats of a “rushed” impeachment and insists it’s too late.

National Review editor Rich Lowry argues, somewhat more forthrightly, that the timing inherently ruled out any conviction. “The problem with impeachment was that it seemed inevitable that it would either be so rushed that it would dispense with every traditional process and therefore lack legitimacy or that it would stretch beyond Trump’s time in office with no chance to convict and therefore lack legitimacy … ” he argues, “There were no good options in terms of timing here, given that Trump’s most flagrant post-election offense came two weeks away from his scheduled exit from office.”

Nobody is defending the insurrection. It merely happens to have taken place during a wormhole in the calendar in which a president can violate the law with complete impunity. They would like very much to hold Trump accountable, but the founders designed the Presidential Crime Wormhole, and we must respect their wisdom.
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ex-khobar Andy
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Re: Impeachment redux

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Normally in a court proceeding there is a judge there to provide guidance on the law. Clearly there is disagreement about whether after-the-fact impeachment is constitutional. (I think it is; but I am not a lawyer nor have I ever played one on TV. I did once in a school play but I don't think that counts.) Would it make sense to get a ruling first - SCOTUS???? - that it is or is not constitutional, without arguing the specific issues? Then the impeachment trial can go ahead or not as the case may be, and the discussion can be about the actions of the president and whether they deserve punishment of some sort. In other words, if the Senate votes to acquit based on some notion that the post facto impeachment is unconstitutional, is the Senate the final authority of its constitutionality?

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Re: Impeachment redux

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And from the piece Econo posted:
“There were no good options in terms of timing here, given that Trump’s most flagrant post-election offense came two weeks away from his scheduled exit from office.”
I know it will never happen because any Constitutional Amendment requires 3/4 of the states - but surely it makes sense that as soon as the election results are clear, the moving vans come in. No other major country that I can think of has this absurd ten week intra-regnum. (The original 1787 four month period might have made sense given the communications of the time; the 1933 XX Amendment to January 20th might have made sense at the time for the same reasons.) It would have the added benefit of letting the electorate know what sort of people the new president plans to have around the Administration and might inform their votes. (Hollow laughter emoticon, if there is one.)

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Re: Impeachment redux

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ex-khobar Andy wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 5:51 pm
Normally in a court proceeding there is a judge there to provide guidance on the law. Clearly there is disagreement about whether after-the-fact impeachment is constitutional. (I think it is; but I am not a lawyer nor have I ever played one on TV. I did once in a school play but I don't think that counts.) Would it make sense to get a ruling first - SCOTUS???? - that it is or is not constitutional, without arguing the specific issues? Then the impeachment trial can go ahead or not as the case may be, and the discussion can be about the actions of the president and whether they deserve punishment of some sort. In other words, if the Senate votes to acquit based on some notion that the post facto impeachment is unconstitutional, is the Senate the final authority of its constitutionality?
The problem, Andy, is that impeachment of the president is an exclusive power of Congress and the Supreme Court has avoided weighing in on or limiting it; it is unlikely they would interfere in this instance either. This is entirely up to Congress.

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Re: Impeachment redux

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Re: Impeachment redux

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Gob
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Ah, the American political system, I've always been a fan...
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: Impeachment redux

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Even without impeachment, the AG could decide to charge Trump with incitement (and other crimes perhaps), but I seriously doubt there is enough evidence to convict him in a court--most of it could be explained away as an exercise of free speech (and it might even be dismissed without a trial. That's why I think impeachment i preferable, even though conviction is unlikely. At the very least, all of his conduct would be exposed and discussed in a public forum.

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Re: Impeachment redux

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

And in a court with a jury of 12, they will never get a vote to convict.

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Re: Impeachment redux

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I'm not even sure they'd get that far; a grand jury might indict, but a judge could easily rule there's nothing to go to a jury.

FWIW, when I was a senior in high school I was an employee in a unionized store and we had a strike. I still recall the "union boss" (not sure what he really was called) who urged the crowd to go to the picket lines and "fight like hell to get our rights" and "show them we mean business and won't give an inch". Incitement to violence (that ultimately did not happen) or just revving up the crowd to stand firm in the face of oppression?

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Re: Impeachment redux

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This deserves a thread of its own but it's of a piece with Trump's behavior. Marjorie Taylor Greene is on record challenging the Parkland shooting survivors, calling it a false flag operation and so on. Not long ago we threw Al Franken out of the Senate for some schoolboyish pranks. Yes: foolish, and he should have been told to grow the fuck up. But in the end no harm done. And compared to Greene's action, it's minute. Insignificant.

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Re: Impeachment redux

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We didn’t throw him out, he resigned in face of calls from some in his party. Censure would surely have been enough, if that.

That’s the chasm between our parties now. Republicans won’t even call for her to resign much less to expel her, for statements that not long ago would have been thought entirely incompatible with public office. And she will never bow to calls for resignation, she’s absent character.
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Re: Impeachment redux

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eddieq
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Well, DJT had a four year crime spree without facing any consequences, so why limit it to two weeks?

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Econoline
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Trump Excitedly Accepts Democrats’ Offer to Star in New TV Show

By Andy Borowitz

February 4, 2021


PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it “the best news I’ve had in months,” Donald J. Trump has excitedly accepted congressional Democrats’ offer to star in a new, nationally broadcast television show.

Trump boasted to reporters about his new TV opportunity, which was presented to him, on Thursday, by Representative Jamie Raskin.

“It’s going to be similar to ‘The Apprentice,’ because I’ll be sitting behind a table, but it will also be a little different,” Trump explained. “Instead of me asking a lot of questions, people will be asking me the questions. That should spice things up.”

Fighting COVID-19 with Ancestral Wisdom in the Amazon

The former President said that the “most amazing” aspect of his new show would be the number of networks broadcasting it.

“ ‘The Apprentice’ was just on NBC,” he said. “This is going to be on every network at the same time. Even those losers at CNN have committed to putting it on.”

Trump predicted that his incredible comeback vehicle would silence the doubters who have said that he was all washed up.

“According to Raskin, no other President has ever had a show like this,” he said. “I’ve still got it.”
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Re: Impeachment redux

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Anybody watching the trial?
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Re: Impeachment redux

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Politically it will make no difference how the trial turns out. If Trump is disqualified; he will just be a kingmaker. It would actually be better for Republicans if he is disqualified. He most likely would not win again, and if he did, he wouldn’t be any better a politician than he was last time. To be a good politician, one has to be a skilled liar like Biden.
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Re: Impeachment redux

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