Democrats misuse their impeachment authority as they fail to make the case that Trump misused his executive authority.
Experts were called in to opine on whether the allegations squared with the Framersā conception of impeachable offenses, namely, ātreason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.ā
Those impeachment cases, however, involved clear allegations of law-breaking. With Trump, the difficulty Democrats have had from the start is the lack of a clear law violation.
They allege that the president pressured Ukraineās government ā delaying the transfer of defense aid and a White House visit coveted by the countryās new president ā to induce Kiev to announce investigations that would be helpful to Trump politically.
Democrats have struggled to come up with a crime on these facts. They have tried labeling the behavior a campaign finance violation, an extortion crime and seemed finally to settle on bribery ā evidently, it polled better than āquid pro quoā and other less catchy forms of misconduct.
Yet bribery remained problematic, since there was no actual bribe in the common-sense understanding of that term. The Ukrainians, for example, got their defense aid, and Trump didnāt insist on any announcement of investigations, much less the conduct of them.
It certainly helps to have a prosecutable crime to impeach a president. Politically speaking, it is very difficult to convince the American people of the necessity of removing a president from power without proving that he broke the law.
The Ukraine facts turn out to be much ado about not much ā for all the huffing and puffing, Kievās security against Russia wasnāt compromised, and the Ukrainians didnāt undertake any investigations of Trumpās political opponents in America. If you were trying to impeach on those facts, you would find it far easier to talk about airy principles.
Of course, that wasnāt enough for the Framers.
They didnāt just wrestle with the principles, colonial precedents and British common law of impeachable offenses. They quite intentionally made impeachment hard to do politically. The real question is not: How do you define abuse of power? It is: Is there misconduct so egregious that a public consensus for stripping the president of power will form ā such that a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate will vote to convict and remove?
https://nypost.com/2019/12/04/democ...medium=site buttons&utm_campaign=site buttons
Experts were called in to opine on whether the allegations squared with the Framersā conception of impeachable offenses, namely, ātreason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.ā
Those impeachment cases, however, involved clear allegations of law-breaking. With Trump, the difficulty Democrats have had from the start is the lack of a clear law violation.
They allege that the president pressured Ukraineās government ā delaying the transfer of defense aid and a White House visit coveted by the countryās new president ā to induce Kiev to announce investigations that would be helpful to Trump politically.
Democrats have struggled to come up with a crime on these facts. They have tried labeling the behavior a campaign finance violation, an extortion crime and seemed finally to settle on bribery ā evidently, it polled better than āquid pro quoā and other less catchy forms of misconduct.
Yet bribery remained problematic, since there was no actual bribe in the common-sense understanding of that term. The Ukrainians, for example, got their defense aid, and Trump didnāt insist on any announcement of investigations, much less the conduct of them.
It certainly helps to have a prosecutable crime to impeach a president. Politically speaking, it is very difficult to convince the American people of the necessity of removing a president from power without proving that he broke the law.
The Ukraine facts turn out to be much ado about not much ā for all the huffing and puffing, Kievās security against Russia wasnāt compromised, and the Ukrainians didnāt undertake any investigations of Trumpās political opponents in America. If you were trying to impeach on those facts, you would find it far easier to talk about airy principles.
Of course, that wasnāt enough for the Framers.
They didnāt just wrestle with the principles, colonial precedents and British common law of impeachable offenses. They quite intentionally made impeachment hard to do politically. The real question is not: How do you define abuse of power? It is: Is there misconduct so egregious that a public consensus for stripping the president of power will form ā such that a two-thirds supermajority of the Senate will vote to convict and remove?
https://nypost.com/2019/12/04/democ...medium=site buttons&utm_campaign=site buttons
