Impeachment of Donald J. Trump

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Ridgerunner said:
You’re right in a strictly legal sense. He told the Dems he would, though, if it came to court. But the Dems didn’t want to challenge it so they didn’t. And he told his employees he would as well, and expected them to comply with what he had a right to do.
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The proper way to invoke Executive Privilege is to show up for your deposition and refuse to answer specific questions with a claim of privilege.

This idea of “the President will/might claim privilege” is specious anyway. He’s claiming “absolute privilege”, but not really, because you have to actually show up. and “absolute privilege” doesn’t apply here. You have to be asked a question and refuse to answer.
Ridgerunner said:
Not sure who you’re talking about. The ones the Dems are so anxious to get now were never subpoenaed. But even if they had been, the privilege is that of the president. That’s exercising a right, not “evidence of obstruction”.
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See above. Not cooperating is different than claiming a proper privilege when questions are asked.
Ridgerunner said:
You expect us to believe the Dems won’t keep up a constant clamor for Trump’s head to the election if the Senate doesn’t convict?
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It will be a great miscarriage of the impeachment power if the Republicans in the Senate put party over Country and don’t convict. If that is the case, yes, the House should continue to investigate and do their job of oversight of the Executive Branch.
Ridgerunner said:
That’s something you invoke in Court in order to prevent congressional interference with executive decisionmaking. You don’t invoke it formally until then
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I think I agree? You have to show up and exercise privilege.

What would happen if you were subpoenaed before a Grand Jury and you refused to show up and said, “I’m just going to invoke my 5th Amendment right anyway”? Contempt and jail.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Or Obama. But they knew how destructive it would be and cared more about the country than that.
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Of course, Obama never extorted a country to investigate his political enemies by withholding funding earmarked for that country by Congress. That makes a big difference here.
 
drcube said:
Well, I guess the Republicans should have impeached Holder.
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They held him in contempt, and that issue took some time to resolve.

The situation with Trump is different, involving an impeachment, not an oversight investigation, and is utterly unprecedented.

The Managers, in response to the flimsy brief of Trump’s lawyers wrote this:
Article II charges President Trump with directing the categorical and indiscriminate defiance of every single subpoena served by the House in its impeachment inquiry. No President or other official in the history of the Republic has ever ordered others to defy an impeachment subpoena;Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton all allowed their most senior advisors to give testimony to Congressional investigators. Nor has any President or other official himself defied such a subpoena—except for President Nixon, who, like President Trump, faced an article of impeachment for Obstruction of Congress. Instead, Presidents have recognized that Congressional power is at its apex in an impeachment. As President James Polk stated: the “power of the House”in cases of impeachment “would penetrate into the most secret recesses of the Executive Departments.”

President Trump’s defenses are wrong. At his personal direction, nine officials refused subpoenas to testify and the White House, Office of Management and Budget, and Departments of State, Defense, and Energy all defied valid subpoenas for documents. The fact that President Trump caved to public pressure and released two call transcripts—which, in fact, expose his guilt—hardly amounts to “transparency” and does not mitigate his obstruction.

Nor is President Trump’s Obstruction of Congress excused by his incorrect legal arguments.

First , the impeachment inquiry was properly authorized and Congressional subpoenas do not require a vote of the full House.

Second , President Trump’s blanket and categorical defiance of the House stemmed from his unilateral decision not to “participate” in the impeachment investigation, not from any legal assertion.
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Third , President Trump never actually asserted executive privilege, a limited doctrine that has never been accepted as a basis for defying impeachment subpoenas. The foreign affairs and national security setting of this impeachment does not require a different result here; it makes the President’s obstruction all the more alarming. The Framers explicitly stated that betrayal involving foreign powers is a core impeachable offense. It follows that the House is empowered to investigate such abuses, as all 17 current and former Executive Branch officials who testified about these matters recognized.

Fourth , the President’s invocation of “absolute immunity” fails because this fictional doctrinehas been rejected by every court to consider it in similar circumstances; President Trump extended itfar beyond any understanding by prior Presidents; and it offers no explanation for his across-the-board refusal to turn over every single document subpoenaed.

Finally , the President’s lawyers have argued in court that it is constitutionally forbidden forthe House to seek judicial enforcement of its subpoenas, even as they now argue in the Senate thatthe House is required to seek such enforcement. Again, President Trump would have it both ways:he argues simultaneously that the House must use the courts and that it is prohibited from using the courts. This duplicity is poor camouflage for the weakness of President Trump’s legal arguments. More significantly, any judicial enforcement effort would have taken years to pursue. In granting the House the “sole Power of Impeachment,” along with the power to investigate grounds for impeachment, the Framers did not require the House to exhaust all alternative methods of obtaining evidence, especially when those alternatives would fail to deal with an immediate threat. To protect the Nation, the House had to act swiftly in addressing the clear and present danger posed by President Trump’s misconduct.President Trump engaged in a cover-up that itself establishes his consciousness of guilt.Innocent people seek to bring the truth to light. In contrast, President Trump has acted in the way that guilty people do when they are caught and fear the facts. But the stakes here are even higher than that. In completely obstructing an investigation into his own misconduct, President Trump asserted the prerogative to nullify Congress’s impeachment power itself. He placed himself above the law and eviscerated the separation of powers. This claim evokes monarchy and despotism. It has no place in our democracy, where even the highest official must answer to Congress and the Constitution.
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Ridgerunner said:
Every exercise of one person’s right is potentially “obstruction” of the purposes of one who does not want him to exercise that right. The Dems could have subpoenaed those people and let the Courts decide whether Trump was right or they were. But they didn’t.
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The courts did weigh in against Trump:

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www.telegraph.co.uk

And since these documents could be released to the public, there must have been no reason to withhold them from congress:

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thehill.com
 
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drcube said:
Of course, Obama never extorted a country to investigate his political enemies by withholding funding earmarked for that country by Congress. That makes a big difference here.
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Obama used refusal of aid to extort a number of countries.

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pjmedia.com

Now, whether Biden’s threat to withhold aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire the investigator of Biden’s son’s company was his own bluff or Obama’s threat is something we don’t know, but should investigate. Dems, of course, don’t want it investigated and therefore made it the centerpiece of their impeachment attempt.
And it seems almost certain that Obama used foreign intelligence people, including, seemingly, British, Australian and Italian intelligence to investigate Trump and aid in charging his campaign people with crimes. And the Steele dossier was of foreign origin, meant to defeat Trump, and the origins were Ukrainian and Russian.

The Democrats suborned the CIA, FBI, IRS, NSA and it would have actually been less harmful to the country if they had ONLY enlisted foreigners in subverting the 2016 election.
PaulinVA said:
The proper way to invoke Executive Privilege is to show up for your deposition and refuse to answer specific questions with a claim of privilege.
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If you’re subpoenaed for a deposition, which Bolton, Mulvaney et al were not.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Obama used refusal of aid to extort a number of countries.
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Oh my.
Are people still trying to deflect on this specious point?
Or perhaps trying to convince other that this bogus argument has some merit?

As has been pointed form the get go:
The quid prop quo is not intrinsically the problem.
Rather it is a quid pro quo for corrupt benefit that is the problem.
And that is the case made in Article I.
(See post #828).
Ridgerunner said:
If you’re subpoenaed for a deposition, which Bolton, Mulvaney et al were not.
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Not the point. (See post #828 and #854).
 
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This Obama appointee ruled that McGhan had to appear if subpoenaed, but that objection on the basis of executive privilege could still be made. The administration appealed the decision to the Circuit Court of Appeals. this is not over.
 
7_Sorrows said:
What about Biden’s quid pro quo?
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What about it? And why the whataboutism?

I think that post #857 handled that question.
And note that contemporaneous accounts make it clear that Biden was acting openly on behalf of the United States and its allies to remove a corrupt prosecutor, whose corrupt acts included obstructing proceedings against Burisma’s CEO.
 
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dvdjs said:
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mrad25:
The President had a right, actually under his oath a duty, to ask for an investigation into any “possible” criminal activity with Ukraine and/or relating to the 2016 election or any person.
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I think that a fair reading of what Trump did leads to the contrary perspective. We have agreements with Ukraine on matters such as these. We have, in law, processes by which we assess progress on anti-corruption efforts in the Ukraine.
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Part of the audacity of Trump here is that he didn’t presume corruption on the part of the Ukrainian government, unlike Biden who did.

Perhaps what the real issue here is the presumption on the part of Democrats to know what is corrupt or not vis a vis a sovereign nation and attempting to meddle in their affairs by dictating to them what is corrupt and what is not – and attempting to overthrow sovereign government in the process – Libya, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, among others. As if Biden would recognize corruption when it stands directly in front of or beside him.

The supposed “collusion” of Trump is simply the fact that he respects foreign governments to be autonomous and do the right thing for themselves without determining for them what the “right” thing is, instead of presuming the right of those nations to be puppets of globalism or leftist progressivism.

As to… “we assess progress on anti-corruption efforts.” WE? Who died and made “WE” the boss of the globe? Just a little bit of presumption there, no? Modern colonialism sounds like. Which party keeps decrying colonialism and then turns around and treats other countries like they ought to be “OUR” puppets?

Right, like the Dems or Biden have any moral authority to speak to Ukraine about what constitutes corruption – Fast and Furious, Spygate, FISA warrants, etc.

I found this rather interesting…

 
7_Sorrows said:
What about Biden’s quid pro quo?
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Democrats try to claim Biden didn’t interfere with Ukrainian justice just to protect his son who was making millions for doing nothing. They claim the prosecutor was corrupt. Problem is, that prosecutor has not been charged with anything by anyone, not even by the current “reform” Ukrainian administration.

But even if that prosecutor was corrupt, it was still interference with the lawful authorities in Ukraine and Biden had a conflict of interest to massive that he should have been the very last person entrusted with such a task. Obama admitted launching Hillary’s war in Syria was a mistake. Maybe someday he’ll admit appointing Biden to interfere with the justice system in Ukraine was too.
 
dvdjs said:
Nope. The treaty spell out the manner for conducting such work. It does not involve the President, and it does not include the administration asking for specious investigations, asking for public announcement of said investigations, and establishing quid pro quo that that afford personal poltical gain. This is creepy stuff. It is the founder’s nightmare.
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A lot of assumptions in this post. Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution gives Trump the duty and obligation. In fact he owes it the American people to ask for an investigation. In accordance with Article 2 of the Treaty Trump informed Ukraine the AG would be in touch to carry out the specifics of assistance with the request and as the treaty specifies. Just because the treaty exists doesn’t mean it overrides the US Constitution and Trump’s duty and obligation as the President to ask for potential crimes to be investigated.
 
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mrad25 said:
Are those included in the articles of impeachment? Why not?
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Literally the document that is the subject of the thread:
President Trump’s Abuse of Power Encompassed Impeachable “Bribery” and Violations of Federal Criminal Law
Applying the constitutional definition of “Bribery” here, there can be little doubt that it is satisfied. President Trump solicited President Zelensky for a “favor” of great personal value to him; he did so corruptly; and he did so in a scheme to influence his own official actions respecting the release of military and security assistance and the offer of a White House meeting
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