If the whistleblower story is true - Trump has committed the ultimate impeachable offense.
How many times have we heard that?
Here, you vouch for NR. Here's a guy worth listening to on these matters:
Trump Whistleblower Claim: Congress Should Investigate | National Review
The
New York Times produced a
report by no fewer than eight of its top journalists, joining the seven (and counting) who are
working it for the
Washington Post, which broke the story.
It stems from — what else? — anonymous leaks attributed to former intelligence officials. While the media purport to be deeply concerned about Trump-administration law-breaking in classified matters, there is negligible interest in whether the intelligence officials leaking to them are flouting the law.
Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump’s private lawyer, has been open about urging Ukraine to pursue an investigation against Biden. When he was Obama-administration vice president, Biden claims to have pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of a natural-gas company that Biden’s son, Hunter, sat on the company’s board of, and his law firm was lavishly compensated by.
Congress seems wholly uninterested in examining Obama-administration and Clinton-campaign dealings with Ukraine in 2016, when our government encouraged Kiev to investigate Paul Manafort, and a leak about a claim of lavish cash payments to Manafort resulted in his removal as Trump’s campaign chairman.
Section 3033(k)(5)(G) (of Title 50, U.S. Code), an “urgent concern” relates to specified problems involving intelligence activities and classified information that are within the responsibility of the Director of National Intelligence.
Section 3033 Does Not Apply to the President
The whistleblower incorrectly believed President Trump’s conversation with the unidentified foreign leader qualified as an “urgent concern” as defined in the statute. On August 12, the whistleblower reported the matter to IGIC Atkinson. Atkinson concluded that the complaint did indeed spell out a Section 3033 urgent concern and
incorrectly, applied the statute to the president.
Atkinson thus notified Joseph Maguire, the acting DNI. Maguire did not believe the matter met the Section 3033 definition because it related to an activity by someone not under the authority of the DNI (the president). Consequently, Maguire
correctly declined to pass the complaint along to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Meanwhile, current and former intelligence officials continue to leak like sieves in their years-long campaign against the sitting president. The existence of the complaint, the report of it to the IGIC, and the acting DNI’s refusal to alert Congress became known to the media and to Chairman Schiff. The chairman is claiming that the Trump administration is violating the law by failing to notify Congress of an urgent concern, as mandated by Section 3033.
Chairman Schiff’s claim is wrong. Section 3033 does not apply to a president’s negotiations with or commitments to foreign powers, or to a president’s sharing of classified information with foreign powers. To repeat, the statute applies to intelligence activities by government officials acting under the authority of the DNI. The Trump administration can not correctly be accused of law-breaking for declining to follow Section 3033.
In our system, the conduct of foreign policy is a near plenary authority of the chief executive. The only exceptions are explicitly stated in the Constitution (Congress regulates foreign commerce, the Senate must approve treaties, etc.).
Congress may not enact statutes that limit the president’s constitutional power to conduct foreign policy; the Constitution may not be amended by statute.
If the express terms of a statute do not apply its provisions to the president, then the statute is deemed not to apply to the president if its application would conflict with the president’s constitutional powers.
Section 3033 does not refer to the president. By its terms, it applies to intelligence-community officials. And, in any event, it may not properly be applied to the president if doing so would hinder the president’s capacious authority to conduct foreign policy.
When a Republican is in the White House, "progressives" are enthralled by laws that, in effect, empower bureaucrats — here, “intelligence professionals”– to second-guess and otherwise check the president’s power to direct the executive branch. That is not our system.
In conducting foreign affairs, the president may make commitments to other foreign leaders (subject to the Constitution’s treaty clause). The president, unlike his subordinates, also has the power to disclose any classified information he chooses to disclose.
There has been a three-year campaign by current and former government officials to undermine the Trump presidency by lawless leaks of politicized intelligence.
The fact that Biden may end up being Trump’s rival in the 2020 election does not immunize him from investigation. If he used his political influence to squeeze a foreign power for his son’s benefit, that should be explored.