While Ted Cruz makes a convincing case for giving Trump his day in court and a proper acquittal, there is precedent for striking down articles of impeachment. Here’s why the Senate should do so.
For months, the Democrats have had carte blanche to throw mud at the President, and he has had little or no opportunity to hit back, other than the occasional twitter blast, rally speech or press question.
Ted Cruz has made a case that this process gives the President his opportunity to clear the air, and stand as a man who was tried and acquitted in the sight of all, rather than just tagged with charges that were brushed away on a technicality.
That doesn’t mean we need to accept these allegations at face value.
And that’s all they are, at this point, allegations. As even the Democrats have admitted, they are effectively the ‘Prosecution’ in this case. Only an idiot would direct any serious question about the guilt or innocence of the accused to the prosecuting attorneys. One might expect that pretty much everyone is assumed to be guilty in their eyes. It’s part of the role as prosecution.
Fortunately — however much Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler & Co. try to blur these lines — juries are not made up of prosecutors, or we would live in a very different America.
Every time that Trump pushed back against Schiff’s draconian partisan demands, Schiff used that as an evidence of ‘guilt’ on Trump’s part, as though the Executive branch were suddenly no longer an ‘equal branch of government’, but rather somehow subservient to every whim of a handful of Democrats with a slim majority in the House.
The meaningful article of whether Trump truly abused his office or not with respect to Ukraine is what these bogus allegations are really about.
But the Second Article must be slapped down with the contempt it so richly deserves. An excerpt:
President Trump abused the powers of his high office through the following means:
(1) Directing the White House to defy a lawful subpoena by withholding the production of documents sought therein by the Committees.
(2) Directing other Executive Branch agencies and offices to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of documents and records from the Committees—in response to which the Department of State, Office of Management and Budget, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense refused to produce a single document or record.
(3) Directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees—in response to which nine Administration officials defied subpoenas for testimony, namely John Michael “Mick” Mulvaney, Robert B. Blair, John A. Eisenberg, Michael Ellis, Preston Wells Griffith, Russell T. Vought, Michael Duffey, Brian McCormack, and T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.
These actions were consistent with President Trump’s previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference in United States elections.
Through these actions, President Trump sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its “sole Power of Impeachment”. In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. This abuse of office served to cover up the President’s own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment—and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.
Source: NPR
There is a very simple reason that the Second Article of impeachment should be dismissed out of hand. It is an inaccurate and unjust account of the events.
Schiff was calling witnesses in secret. And part of that process included a rule that forbade the presence of White House counsel to sit in on the proceedings.
If White House counsel is not present, there is nobody there to ensure the legitimate rights of the Executive branch are not unjustly trampled by a power-hungry Congress that was metaphorically ‘out for blood’.
There was nobody there to stand in for the interests of the Executive branch and — in precisely the same way that Schiff directed witnesses not to answer any questions deemed ‘out of bounds’ of the inquiry — to instruct witnesses that they cannot answer this or that question unless and until the Executive waives his privilege.
The way such an impasse is normally resolved is to go before the court, and have the judge rule which party is right which is wrong or what concessions (for example, having a White House lawyer present) must be met before compliance is mandatory.
Only AFTER a court ruling over such conflicts are the demands truly binding. At no point did Trump or the White House disobey a court order.
Democrats are desperate to call this ‘contempt of congress’ because it sounds like the actual crime ‘contempt of court’.
Because Schiff and Nadler abused their authority, this article should be dismissed as the bogus partisan horse crap that it is.
And then everyone can focus their attention on discrediting the OTHER bogus article in the Senate proceedings.
