Trump's Russian Collusion

[Typical Lax Dad]

The “F” team....give ‘em hell Trump!

[njbill]

"Aligns closely with the rules package approved 100-0 during the Clinton trial?" Gee, I don't remember the Senate being in session in the middle of the night back then. But then Moscow/Midnight Mitch wasn't in charge in 1998.

[Trinity]

From Ken Starr’s memoir. So we know what these legal giants really think.

[seacoaster]

The whole thing is rigged. Here is one commentator's quick and dirty view:

"Astoundingly blatant rush to judgment. It would be funny if not so sad. Consider: (a) motion schedule: Both sides must file motions @ 9:00 am Wednesday, respond to each other's motions @11 am Wed, and argue the motions @ 1:00 pm Wed... Be serious. No court would set that schedule in a DUI case.

Rule jams each party's opening presentations into two 12-hour days beginning at 1:00 pm. Absurd for both counsel and senators. Plain objective to wear out the participants and exhaust public, thus discouraging viewership ...

Most outrageously, after presentations & Senate questions, Senators are to vote, not on whether additional witnesses should be heard, but on whether that question is even in order. AND vote is to be taken without debate. Which means that if McConnell can get 51 senators...o vote that even considering the question of addt'l will be out of order, NO OPEN DEBATE ON THE QUESTION OF WHETHER ADDIT'IONAL WITNESSES ARE NEEDED WILL EVEN BE HELD! World's greatest deliberative body, indeed. God weeps..."

All to inquire into the President using the powers of his office to blackmail a foreign leader to help him influence the American election. It makes the Watergate cover-up look like a children's game. All to mask the fact that the President has denied access to important evidentiary materials and sources, including possibly using the classification system to preclude witness testimony. All to mask the fact that the President and his minions have proffered no single piece of evidence that exculpates the President after the "perfect call." Republicans are -- if this unfolds the way we all think it will -- just traitors to the meaning of the Constitution and Republic.

[Trinity]

And then Trump can pardon Manafort and Stone and lift Russian sanctions.

[seacoaster]

More on the bogus argument:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/us/p ... e=Homepage

"As President Trump’s impeachment trial opens, his lawyers have increasingly emphasized a striking argument: Even if he did abuse his powers in an attempt to bully Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election on his behalf, it would not matter because the House never accused him of committing an ordinary crime.

Their argument is widely disputed. It cuts against the consensus among scholars that impeachment exists to remove officials who abuse power. The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” means a serious violation of public trust that need not also be an ordinary crime, said Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and the author of a recent book on the topic.

“This argument is constitutional nonsense,” Mr. Bowman said. “The almost universal consensus — in Great Britain, in the colonies, in the American states between 1776 and 1787, at the Constitutional Convention and since — has been that criminal conduct is not required for impeachment.”

But the argument is politically convenient for Mr. Trump. For any moderate Republican senator who may not like what the facts already show about his campaign of pressure on Ukraine, the theory provides an alternative rationale to acquit the president.

Indeed, if it were true, then there would also be no reason to call witnesses like John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, because what he and others know about Mr. Trump’s motivations and intentions in his Ukraine dealings would not affect the outcome of the trial.

Mr. Trump’s legal team hammered away at the argument in its 110-page brief submitted to the Senate on Monday. “House Democrats’ newly invented ‘abuse of power’ theory collapses at the threshold because it fails to allege any violation of law whatsoever,” the president’s lawyers wrote.

Many legal scholars say senators should not take this argument seriously. They point, among other things, to evidence that for centuries before the American Revolution, the British Parliament impeached officials for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that constituted abuses of power but were not indictable offenses. The pattern informed the framers of the Constitution, who echoed that concept.

One precedent — a high-profile case against a former British governor-general in India named Warren Hastings accused of mismanagement, mistreatment of locals and military misconduct — unfolded during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and was reported in American newspapers.

His chief prosecutor, the famous parliamentarian Edmund Burke, argued that Mr. Hastings’s actions violated the public trust even though they were not indictable. (Mr. Hastings was acquitted, but only many years later.)

The original draft of the Constitution had made only treason and bribery a basis for impeachment. But according to James Madison’s notes of the Constitutional Convention, George Mason brought up the Hastings case and proposed expanding the definition of impeachment to cover something like it. After rejecting the term “maladministration” as too broad, the convention participants decided to add the English term “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Mr. Bowman — whose scholarship on impeachment law is cited in a footnote in the Trump legal team brief — called the arguments in that brief “a well-crafted piece of sophistry that cherry-picks sources and ignores inconvenient history and precedent.” For example, he noted, it makes no mention of how the Hastings case involved allegations of abuses of power that were not indictable crimes.

Scholars pointed to other major landmarks. In 1788, as supporters of the Constitution were urging states to ratify the document, Alexander Hamilton described impeachable conduct in one of the Federalist Papers as “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust,” and “political” offenses that injure society.

Mr. Hamilton also wrote that impeachments would differ from common trials in part because prosecutors and judges would not be as limited “in delineation of the offense.”

Critics of the Trump team’s theory have also noted that when the Constitution was drafted, hardly any federal criminal laws had been written. And several early impeachment proceedings — including against a judge who got drunk while presiding over cases — did not involve indictable offenses.

“It is just quite clear that the commission of a crime is neither necessary nor sufficient for an act to be impeachable,” said John Mikhail, a Georgetown University law professor. He portrayed the Trump legal team’s argument as not merely wrong, but as not even worthy of being deemed serious.

But Alan Dershowitz, a leading proponent of the theory, disagreed. An emeritus Harvard Law School professor and a celebrated criminal defense lawyer, he has joined Mr. Trump’s legal team and is preparing a presentation about the idea that he said he expects to make to the Senate on Friday.

Among other things, Mr. Dershowitz said in an interview, he interpreted Mr. Hamilton to be saying not that any violation of the public trust is impeachable, but that only crimes that are also violations of the public trust meet that standard.

He also said that there were some common-law crimes at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, and that the framers expected Congress to eventually enact criminal laws that could serve as the basis for impeachments.

Mr. Dershowitz said he intended to model his presentation on an argument put forward at the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson by his chief defense counsel, Benjamin Robbins Curtis, a former Supreme Court associate justice.

Mr. Johnson was saved from conviction and removal when the vote fell one short of the necessary supermajority. Mr. Curtis had argued that Mr. Johnson was not accused of committing a legitimate crime, and that removing him absent one would subvert the constitutional structure and make impeachment a routine tool of political struggle.

But other legal scholars, like Laurence Tribe, a constitutional specialist at Harvard Law School and an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, have argued that Mr. Dershowitz is overreading and misrepresenting this aspect of the Johnson trial, especially against the backdrop of other evidence about the original understanding of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the range of factors that went into Mr. Johnson’s narrow acquittal.

In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Mr. Tribe accused Mr. Trump’s legal team of using “bogus legal arguments to mislead the American public or the senators weighing his fate.”

....

Some of Mr. Dershowitz’s critics have questioned whether he really believes what he is now saying, noting that in 1998, during the Clinton impeachment, he said: “It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime, if you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president and who abuses trust and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.”

Mr. Dershowitz argued that his position today was not inconsistent with what he said in 1998, pointing to his use of the phrase “technical crime” and saying that he is arguing today that there needs to be “crime-like” conduct. He also said he did not know about Mr. Curtis’s 1868 argument during the Clinton impeachment era, and reading it had affected his thinking.

Still, he acknowledged that his interpretation is an outlier.

“My argument will be very serious and very scholarly,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “The fact that other scholars disagree, that’s for the Senate to consider. There is a division — most of the scholars disagree with me. I think they’re wrong.”

But Mr. Mikhail said Mr. Dershowitz and the Trump legal team were wrong, and he noted that many senators of both parties went to law school or were otherwise legally sophisticated.

“These are very smart, legally informed people,” he said. “They understand the law. They can certainly see through ruses and efforts to distract and divert.”

[tech37]

some analysis

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... rikes-back

[Trinity]

Politically, the Senate is on trial. Are they in on the caper or not. Nunes and staff was. Who else? Seventy percent of Americans want witnesses and documents.

[seacoaster]

some analysis

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... rikes-back

Anyone read this magnum opus? The first 79 pages are taken up with the bogus and widely derided argument proffered by Dershowitz, and with procedural nonsense about the supposed unfairness of the House process. Then, barely dealing with the facts of record, the memorandum asserts that the call was indeed perfect and wasn't, you know, what the call really was. The cherry picking and quotes out of context are remarkable (particularly from Dr. Hill, who demolished the President by stating the facts). A lawyer in court might have some trouble avoiding a report to the Bar association from the judge. The memorandum may provide a couple of hangers for the Senators' caps, but it is a really poor effort -- principally because there really isn't an argument that makes what the President and his inside and outside men did OK.

[Trinity]

Giuliani says on Fox that he was “obviously misled” by Lev Parnas, noting that he’s godfather to Parnas’ child. Parnas “in very large part” didn’t tell the truth in his media interviews, Rudy says. Trump should testify, clear everything up.

[Kismet]

This is not new behavior by His DIShonor. Rudy Colludy threw his one-time pal, business partner and now convicted felon Bernie Kerik under the same bus but not before he appointed him to be NYC Police Commissioner and went into private business with him. When he tried to get him named Secretary of Homeland Security by Bush 43 DoJ discovered all of the criminal activity he was engaged in and sent him off to the big house for a few years for tax fraud and perjury. At that point, Rudy dropped him like a hot rock. I'm sure Kerik is another in a long line of convicted felons looking for a pardon from IMPOTUS.

[seacoaster]

some analysis

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... rikes-back

Anyone read this magnum opus? The first 79 pages are taken up with the bogus and widely derided argument proffered by Dershowitz, and with procedural nonsense about the supposed unfairness of the House process. Then, barely dealing with the facts of record, the memorandum asserts that the call was indeed perfect and wasn't, you know, what the call really was. The cherry picking and quotes out of context are remarkable (particularly from Dr. Hill, who demolished the President by stating the facts). A lawyer in court might have some trouble avoiding a report to the Bar association from the judge. The memorandum may provide a couple of hangers for the Senators' caps, but it is a really poor effort -- principally because there really isn't an argument that makes what the President and his inside and outside men did OK.

Here, if anyone wants to read it, is the counter-analysis from the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... s-coverup/

"Trump’s legal team has submitted a lengthy brief in his defense that is packed with the same old nonsense. It insists Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine out of genuine concern over corruption, a reference to Biden’s work as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor, supposedly to protect his son Hunter.

That narrative is fabricated. And the notion that Trump was genuinely concerned about this invented corruption, as if it were just pure coincidence that Trump also worried he might face Biden in 2020, is laughable on its face.

What’s notable in the White House brief, however, is its treatment of Trump’s conditioning of political acts — a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid — on Zelensky doing his bidding.

The brief argues that two of the people who spoke directly to Trump about the freezing of military aid both exonerated him. That’s a reference to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who personally conveyed the extortion demand to Ukraine but said he only “presumed” the money was conditioned on announcing investigations and testified Trump told him “no quid pro quo.”

It’s also a reference to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who asserted Trump personally told him he’d “never” demand such a quid pro quo, after Johnson had expressed deep concern about the frozen aid.

But note how the document references Sondland and Johnson: It repeatedly describes them as the only two people on record who discussed this with Trump. That language is here:

The only two people with statements on record who spoke directly to the President on the matter — Sondland and Senator Ron Johnson — directly contradicted House Democrats’ false allegations.
And here:

In addition to the transcript, the central fact in this case is this: there are only two people who have made statements on the record who say they spoke directly to the President about the heart of this matter — Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Senator Ron Johnson. And they both confirmed that the President stated unequivocally that he sought nothing and no quid pro quo of any kind from Ukraine.
This is the “central fact” in this case. But the very use of the phrase “on record” gives away the entire sordid game.

Here’s why. The whole reason Sondland and Johnson are the only people “on record” — that is, the only people who directly discussed the frozen aid with Trump who testified to the House impeachment inquiry — is because Trump blocked all the other people who also discussed this with him from testifying.

Mulvaney froze the aid at Trump’s direction. Bolton privately argued with Trump over it. They both defied House demands for their testimony — at Trump’s direction. And if GOP senators vote against hearing any witnesses, they will be carrying out Trump’s bidding once again.

And so, Trump’s own brief itself underscores the truth about the coverup — that it’s all about keeping all of these other witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s freezing of the aid off of “the record.” It’s all about keeping them from sharing what they know under oath.

“The brief reveals the secret sauce to the coverup — to try to keep others who directly communicated with the president from going on the record,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, told me.

As it is, the argument that Sondland and Johnson exonerated Trump is nonsense. In the same call where Trump supposedly told Sondland “no quid pro quo,” Trump also told him to convey to Zelensky that he must do Trump’s bidding, even as Trump continued withholding the money.

“The brief carefully relies on these third-person accounts to claim what the president did or did not say,” Goodman told me. “The irony is the Sondland call is actually one of the most incriminating parts of the record. When Sondland told other officials of this very call, it set off alarm bells.”

And Johnson’s statements actually undercut Trump’s case, because Johnson’s concern about what Trump had done itself illustrated how indefensible it was. There is zero reason to accept Trump’s phony denials to Johnson or Sondland at face value: The extortion demand actually was conveyed to Zelensky by Sondland, who was acting at Trump’s direction throughout, and Trump himself directly expressed it to Zelensky on July 25.

What this all shows is that, if GOP senators vote as McConnell hopes, they’ll actually be voting to never hear from the people with the most direct knowledge of the very conduct Trump and his defenders say was entirely above reproach. After all, Trump blocked them from speaking to the House as well.

Those GOP senators will be voting to carry Trump’s coverup all the way through to completion."

[ggait]

And so, Trump’s own brief itself underscores the truth about the coverup — that it’s all about keeping all of these other witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s freezing of the aid off of “the record.” It’s all about keeping them from sharing what they know under oath.

That is the whole game. Which is why Dersh's argument has suddenly become so prominent.

If Dersh is right, then it is perfectly logical to acquit Trump no matter what additional evidence there might be. What us lawyers refer to as a summary judgment. Even if you assume everything the Dems say is true, Trump still merits acquittal. It is just the sort of thing that, say Susan Collins, would go for. And Mitch's rules specifically provide for a vote on that off ramp.

Seems like the only thing that could possibly disrupt the fix is if Bolton's testimony is actually heard. But since Trump, Bolton and Mitch all oppose Bolton's testimony, I doubt that will happen. But we'll hear the truth eventually.

[jhu72]

And so, Trump’s own brief itself underscores the truth about the coverup — that it’s all about keeping all of these other witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s freezing of the aid off of “the record.” It’s all about keeping them from sharing what they know under oath.

That is the whole game. Which is why Dersh's argument has suddenly become so prominent.

If Dersh is right, then it is perfectly logical to acquit Trump no matter what additional evidence there might be. What us lawyers refer to as a summary judgment. Even if you assume everything the Dems say is true, Trump still merits acquittal. It is just the sort of thing that, say Susan Collins, would go for. And Mitch's rules specifically provide for a vote on that off ramp.

Seems like the only thing that could possibly disrupt the fix is if Bolton's testimony is actually heard. But since Trump, Bolton and Mitch all oppose Bolton's testimony, I doubt that will happen. But we'll hear the truth eventually.

… and therein lay the real problem for republican / Trumpnista politicians. They may very well get Trump off, but they will ultimately suffer.

[seacoaster]

Mitch, putting in the fix:

https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/ ... 9960554496

The corrosive effect of lying, about everything, all the time, home in the Senate to roost.

[ToastDunk]

And so, Trump’s own brief itself underscores the truth about the coverup — that it’s all about keeping all of these other witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s freezing of the aid off of “the record.” It’s all about keeping them from sharing what they know under oath.

That is the whole game. Which is why Dersh's argument has suddenly become so prominent.

If Dersh is right, then it is perfectly logical to acquit Trump no matter what additional evidence there might be. What us lawyers refer to as a summary judgment. Even if you assume everything the Dems say is true, Trump still merits acquittal. It is just the sort of thing that, say Susan Collins, would go for. And Mitch's rules specifically provide for a vote on that off ramp.

Seems like the only thing that could possibly disrupt the fix is if Bolton's testimony is actually heard. But since Trump, Bolton and Mitch all oppose Bolton's testimony, I doubt that will happen. But we'll hear the truth eventually.

To quote the President, "sad."

[seacoaster]

some analysis

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... rikes-back

Anyone read this magnum opus? The first 79 pages are taken up with the bogus and widely derided argument proffered by Dershowitz, and with procedural nonsense about the supposed unfairness of the House process. Then, barely dealing with the facts of record, the memorandum asserts that the call was indeed perfect and wasn't, you know, what the call really was. The cherry picking and quotes out of context are remarkable (particularly from Dr. Hill, who demolished the President by stating the facts). A lawyer in court might have some trouble avoiding a report to the Bar association from the judge. The memorandum may provide a couple of hangers for the Senators' caps, but it is a really poor effort -- principally because there really isn't an argument that makes what the President and his inside and outside men did OK.

Again, to the extent you care, another professional filleting of the President's legal memorandum, by Professor Gerhardt:

https://www.justsecurity.org/68181/four ... rial-memo/

"It is hard to take seriously President Donald Trump’s lawyers’ Trial Memorandum submitted on Monday in response to the House Managers’ brief setting forth the grounds and arguments for convicting and removing the President from office. It is a lot of things, but brief it is not. It is 109 pages, with four appendices, written by no less than 12 lawyers. Yet, it is unlike any legal brief and no impeachment defense I have ever seen. It has led constitutional commentators to scramble for the right words: Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe suggests it is a litany of “alternative facts” and “bogus legal arguments.” Frank Bowman, one of the leading scholars of impeachment, calls it “constitutional nonsense,” and I have vacillated between calling it “fake law” because its legal arguments are specious at best or “constitutional projection,” because all the charges it levels at the House actually better describe the President’s own misconduct.

To be fair, there was little expectation that the Memorandum would be any different than the defense we have seen from the President virtually every day when he is credibly charged with some kind of serious misconduct, from self-dealing to the freeze on the appropriated funds for Ukraine’s national security: There is denial, feigned outrage that the Democrats are the real culprits and responsible for much worse, the further outrage that the Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 presidential election, and last but not least the protestation that whatever he did was “perfect.” The Memorandum follows this same pattern down to the very use of the word “perfect.”

It would take more than 109 pages to correct all of the document’s fallacies and incorrect statements of law and fact. Instead, I will highlight four of the Memorandum’s deficiencies that make it more of a political screed than a legal document deserving of respect and serious consideration by senators, the public, historians, and constitutional scholars.

First, the Memorandum is replete with bluster. There is bluster on nearly every page, just as it was in the White House Counsel’s October 8th letter denouncing and demeaning the initiation of the House’s impeachment inquiry against the President of the United States. The House’s impeachment articles are “an affront to the Constitution, “rigged,” “brazen political act,” “debase the grave power of impeachment,” “violate every precedent and principle of fairness” followed in previous impeachments, a “dangerous perversion,” and “are a political tool to overturn the result of the 2016 presidential election and interfere in the 2020 election.” That is a lot of words, and we are not yet through half of the first page of the document. It does not get better the more you read, proving the old adage that, “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” We have seen this kind of behavior before with the tantrums (I am being precise and literal with that choice of words) thrown by Republican members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. The only thing this kind of rhetoric seemingly achieves is energizing the President’s base.

This kind of table pounding is all too familiar. Here again we have the President pounding the table, denying all charges, proclaiming the Democrats have done far worse, and say, as the Memorandum does, “the President did absolutely nothing wrong,” and that his actions were “perfectly legal, completely appropriate.” If it is said enough times, White House lawyers apparently believe, then people will just accept it as fact. That is how disinformation can, indeed, work.

Second, the Memorandum is replete with misrepresentations and false statements of fact. For example, it reiterates the canard that the whistleblower’s report is a “false account.” There was nothing false about it. It was corroborated by virtually every witness who testified before the House Intelligence Committee, and so much the worse for the President that the people testifying against him were not Democrats but people he had appointed himself. It does not just strain credulity but decimates it to maintain that everyone who has testified under oath in these hearings is somehow lying while only the President is telling the truth.

Sometimes, we have to believe what we see and what we hear and not fall prey to the old Chico Marx line, when his fiancée discovers a woman in his bed, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Yet, the Memorandum repeatedly insists that the President’s call was “appropriate” because his concern was with corruption in Ukraine. If the President had such a concern, it is not mentioned anywhere in his speeches or, more pertinent to the impeachment, in none of the President’s calls with Ukraine’s president (despite his team having given him talking points to raise it with President Zelenskyy). Indeed, the word “corruption” does not appear in the call transcripts, nor in the pertinent text messages between Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker or between Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani. The President, and his subordinates involved in the scheme, had no general concern about corruption in that country but instead, as numerous witnesses attested and new documents produced after the impeachment confirm, his concern was always about the Bidens. In the famous July 25th call with the President of Ukraine, President Trump mentioned the Bidens five times. He did not otherwise mention corruption. Combine that with the evidence found by the House Intelligence Committee that there was a systematic effort to create a shadow operation to get rid of the United States’ exemplary ambassador in Ukraine, all done with the purpose of putting pressure on Ukraine to agree merely to the announcement of an investigation against the Bidens. There was, in fact, no concern about an actual investigation, just that announcement, and the reason why is obvious – to promulgate dirt on a leading rival in the next presidential election.

Third, the Memorandum is replete with misrepresentations and false claims about the law and about impeachment practices and procedures as well. For example, the Memorandum repeatedly complains that the House did not afford the president “due process.” Throughout the House’s impeachment proceedings, Republicans proclaimed “due process” was a problem. Yet, the very same Republicans who made this complaint were invited to or participated in the closed door depositions the President is now complaining about. What’s more, “due process” does not apply to these proceedings, since “due process” applies to the government when it is depriving someone of “life, liberty, or property.” In an impeachment, none of those is at risk. Even if the constitutional clause did apply, basic due process requires notice of a hearing and an impartial decision-maker. The President had these safeguards, and more, throughout the House proceedings. He was given a surplus of fair process (including being invited to attend the testimony of constitutional law scholars and even have his counsel question them), but he turned the opportunities down. Importantly, the President was also given the explicit opportunity by the codified ground rules to have his counsel present for hearings and object to the admission of testimony and evidence when that information was submitted to the House Judiciary Committee by the House Intelligence Committee witness.

The Memorandum gets a lot about impeachment wrong. On the legal facts, it argues that not one witness had “direct knowledge” of the call or the President’s role and that the evidence is nothing but “speculation and hearsay.” To begin with, these are just superficial talking points. Numerous prosecutions and impeachments have turned on indirect or circumstantial evidence; the Constitution does not forbid this, nor do the rules of either the House or the Senate. Second, recall yet again that key witnesses with “direct” knowledge of the call are being ordered by the President not to testify. The President’s lawyers defend the President’s refusals to comply with lawful subpoenas on the ground that he was entitled to assert legal defenses in response to them, but that was not, nor could it be, the case when he ordered the entire executive branch not to cooperate with the inquiry. That is not a defense. That is obstruction. What’s more, the nonappearance of these witnesses under orders from the President should count against the President like it would in a criminal trial, as former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann has persuasively written.

Strong competitors for most outrageous claims in the Memorandum abound throughout the document. It suggests, for example, that the two articles of impeachment are “impermissibly duplicitous” and that impeachable offenses must be “violations of established law.” Abuse of power, charged in the first article, is not “duplicitous” in the least. One merely needs to read the constitutional convention debates and The Federalist Papers to know the framers placed impeachment in the Constitution as a check on abuse of power. The Memorandum never pauses to consider what an abuse of power is, but it is the exercise of power in violation of the Constitution. So, the President’s alleged misconduct does violate a law, in this case the supreme law of the land.

The President claims explicitly that he should be treated differently than any other impeachable officials, and so his lawyers quibble that no president has ever been impeached, much less convicted and removed for abuse of power, because the first article “alleges no crimes at all, let alone ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’” as required by the Constitution, they say. It should come as no surprise that this claim is wrong. The second article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 charged that Nixon had ordered the heads of the IRS, the FBI, and the CIA to harass his political enemies. The orders did not violate any criminal laws but they are unquestionably impeachable misconduct.

There is widespread agreement among those who have studied the impeachment process that impeachable offenses are not restricted to crimes. A basic principle of impeachment, recognized in every study of the subject in this country, is that a statutory crime is not a requirement for impeaching a president. Abuse of power was the preeminent concern among the framers. Even Jonathan Turley, the Republicans’ expert in the December 4th hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, said this, and so too has one of President Trump’s defense attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, when he argued against the impeachment of President Clinton. On this point, they were both right, though the President’s lawyers disagree with them.

The Memorandum argues that the fact that the President is different is precisely why he may not be impeached, convicted, and removed for abuse of power. The President has powers no one else has, but he may not always be breaking the criminal law when he abuses his powers. Yet, he still is impeachable for such abuses, because there is often no remedy at law. He may evade all responsibility for his misconduct if the President’s lawyers are right. This is exactly what they want – they want the President to be above the law, they want him to be able to abuse his powers without facing accountability, and they want him to have the freedoms to ignore the criminal law because he is the nation’s chief enforcement officer, to use the powers of his office to displace Congress (by refusing to appropriate funds to Ukraine for his own personal reasons, not for any policy), and to benefit himself. They insist that removing Trump on the basis of the misconduct set forth in the House’s two impeachment articles “would permanently weaken the Presidency and forever alter the balance among the branches of government in a manner that offends the constitutional design established by the Framers.” This is strong language, but the lawyers wish for Trump as president exactly what they wish to prohibit in Congress – breaking the institution away from the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. If impeachment is not legitimate and the president is not subject to civil or criminal accountability while he is in office, he is free to try to rig elections or abuse his power any way he wishes. The ballot box is obviously no remedy for such abuse by a first term president, or one in her second term of office.

Fourth, a final problem with the Memorandum is that the lawyers who wrote it should be brought up on ethics charges in any of the bars in which they are licensed to practice law. Rule 3.3 of the Code of Professional Responsibility requires lawyers to be truthful and candid in the arguments they make before tribunals. The rule counts legislative proceedings as tribunals. Yet, the President’s lawyers take liberties with the law and the facts throughout, for example, maintaining the President’s support for Ukraine is “beyond reproach.” It is likely to be a problem for this assertion given the duties of a lawyer not to make misleading statements or engage in deceitful practices, such as pretending the President did not freeze assistance for Ukraine. The misrepresentations and misstatements of the law are not excused because the President is entitled to a vigorous defense. They pose problems for the President’s lawyers because nothing excuses their deliberately misleading Congress and denying clear truths.

But don’t just take my word that the Memorandum is bad. Just read it."

The Washington Examiner. Jesus H.

[seacoaster]

Fundraising based on the Promise to Fix the Trial in Trump's Favor -- Welcome to Today's GOP:

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1 ... 3563579393

[Brooklyn]

Let's have some real justice for a change.

[jhu72]

Newsweek Poll. 71% of republicans want witnessess.