I’m not very expert about what is and what isn’t an impeachable offense. I know that consensual sex with interns is an impeachable offense but that’s about all I know. So I haven’t followed the impeach Trump stuff very carefully til now.
Maxine Waters has been talking about impeachment for a while now. And today I saw a couple more Democrats in Congress talking about it.
So what’s the deal? If Trump fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation, is that an impeachable offense? Views from lawyers would be welcome here.
Ugh
an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the house of representatives says it is.
Doug!
@Ugh:
But they must have some guidelines, no?
evodevo
An impeachable offense? No, probably not. And besides, without having Dem control of Congress, which is the entity that does the impeaching, how is that gonna happen? I’m holding out for a precision meteor strike myself …
Achrachno
Not a lawyer, but from where I stand it seems to depend on congress. Eating a bologna sandwich might be impeachable if you have enough enemies in congress. But, working with our nation’s enemies for partisan advantage can be OK if you have enough friends.
The Moar You Know
Impeachment is not a legal but a political process. You could impeach someone for running a red light if the politicians involved in the process are willing to stomach the fallout from it.
I don’t see it with the current GOP majority in the house. 46 GOP votes is probably not doable.
Senate: 52(R) – 46(D)
House: 238(R) – 193(D)
The Moar You Know
@Doug!: “High crimes and misdemeanors”. I think the language was left pretty vague on purpose.
jheartney
An impeachable offense is whatever the House and Senate agree is an impeachable offense.
It’s an inherently political proceeding. However, as demonstrated by the Clinton impeachment, if there’s no broad, bipartisan consensus that the offense is worth removing the target, then impeachment will fail, and probably damage the impeachers more than the impeachee. It’s the reason Dubya was never impeached, despite deserving it more than once; House and Senate Dems knew it would be a pointless exercise.
sigaba
@Ugh: “High crimes and misdemeanors.” But that isn’t strictly observed.
Jumbo76
@Ugh:
That is true. It doesn’t have to be any specific crime. But they charged Clinton with perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. If Trump fired Comey to stop the Russia investigation, there is a credible argument that that amounts to obstruction of justice.
Doug!
I mean after Dems take House in 2018.
zhena gogolia
@Doug!:
Then the sky’s the limit!
kindness
Holding out for Democrats to take back the House &/or the Senate in 2018 will not save the republic. That’s a year and a half away. Fox news can bleat a lot of bullshit in a year and a half and if anyone thinks the Comey firing will be foremost in people’s (especially Trump voters) minds come the 2018 elections, well there are several bridges I can let you have for a steal. No, we need action now. We can’t wait a year and a half. We need pitchforks & torches in the street every single day. Time to light a fire under Trump & his minions asses.
Wapiti
If a majority of congress needs a reason, they’ll always have the emoluments clause.
Jumbo76
@jheartney:
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the Clinton impeachment hurt the impeached more than the impeachees. You might make that argument about individual people, but Republicans still kept the house for another 8 years after the Clinton debacle. They also had the presidency. As for W. there was no reason to impeach him, and it probably wasn’t possible in the two years Dems controlled the house during his presidency.
Matt McIrvin
@jheartney: The Clinton impeachment was successful in the long run, though. It almost certainly contributed to George W. Bush winning the Presidency in 2000.
Ian
Congress could impeach him for putting ketchup on a steak if 50% of the house and 2/3s of the senate vote aye.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What ugh said. There’s ample evidence that he is personally profiting from the presidency– I think it was the Qatari gov’t that moved a large meeting to the DC hotel after election, doubling the price of member ship at the tacky palace in FL, using the State Dept website to advertise properties he owns, Uday and Qusay bragging about the “brand”.
The only thing missing is polls telling the Senate class of 2020 that he’s a bigger drag than his/their base is a threat. There are already rumors, which I find quite credible, that GOP MoCs and Senators discuss eventual Impeachment scenarios amongst themselves. You think McCain has forgotten “I like people that don’t get captured”? You think Lindsey Graham doesn’t fantasize about David Broder III on HologramMSNBC reminding the cryogenically preserved head of Cokie Roberts that it was Senator Lindsey O Graham who walked down to the White House to tell Trump it was time to go (at which time the ghost of his Daddy manifested before him and said, “Today, my son, you are a real man, in spite that whole 60 Year Old Virgin thing”)? You think Ben Sasse isn’t dying to play the White Knight who throws primary gauntlet down before the Ogre? that Li’l Marco and Lyin’ Ted and a dozen others aren’t trembling with rage and fear and trying to figure out how to beat Sasse to the punch?
NotMax
Shortest answer: if it can be deemed to fall under the category of obstruction of justice, then yes. (see Nixon, Dick for precedent)
sherparick
In the Federalist No. 65, Hamilton opens a discussion of the Senate’ power to conduct an impeachment trial as follows:
“….A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused….” Hence anything which is a violation of a public trust and causes a severe injury to the State. Everyday Trump commits impeachable offenses.
eldorado
once the dems take the house, then they are going to get these cretins under oath, where they can either turn on themselves or commit perjury. that’s going to wring out plenty of testimony about for a year or so, and then trump can either choose not to run again or get destroyed in either the primary or general.
smintheus
Yes, firing Comey can be construed as obstruction of justice. I’m pretty sure that Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox was one of the articles of impeachment pending against him in Congress.
ETA: Yup, it’s strongly implied in Article One of impeachment:
Ridnik Chrome
Bush and Cheney should have been impeached many times over for their conduct during the Iraq War, but somehow they weren’t. The older I get the more I think that Watergate was a fluke, and pretty much everything in American politics since then has been an effort to make sure it never, ever happens again…
Hobbes83
From. Purely legal lense, his firing of Comey can be construed to be an attempt to obstruct justice, depending on the outcome of the investigation. Politically, this is just another page in the GOP playbook.
jonas
No, just firing the FBI director is not impeachable. Although appointed to a 10-year term, he or she serves at the pleasure of the president. If it comes to light that the firing of the FBI director was clearly an act of obstruction of justice, on the other hand, then there’s a case.
ETA: whoops, or in other words, what several people upthread have already said.
Ian
@Jumbo76:
Illegal detention, rendition, torture, lying to the American people and congress, thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Afghanis and Iraqis, outing a CIA spy because her husband disagreed with you…
I bet our fellow commentators can think of a few more.
ArchTeryx
The real problem with impeachment is how difficult it is to actually execute. The parliamentary “no confidence” vote is far easier and causes snap elections pretty much immediately.
David Rickard
Impeachment is a political, not legal, process; “high crimes and misdemeanors” are whatever pisses off Congress enough to try and oust a President.
jheartney
@Jumbo76: There were plenty of reasons to impeach Dubya; Here’s a list. Some were more serious than others, but many were at least as strong as Clinton’s tangle with a politically motivated perjury trap.
Lapassionara
The problem with impeachment is that Trump remains president while it is happening. I cannot imagine what evil he would do to curry favor with his fascist base in the interim.
Did anyone else see that he claims to have retained counsel who is going to write a letter certifying that he has no ties to Russia? Seriously, based on what evidence?
jheartney
WRT Dems taking the House in 2018: there was a lot of talk in 2007 about all the investigations Dems were going to do once they got subpoena power. The bigger targets (Rove et al) just ignored the subpoenas, with no consequences.
There’s an enormous problem with the Republicans just flouting accepted norms and getting away with it. It may eventually come down to something beyond political talk if they keep it up.
Mike in DC
With sufficiently strong evidence and low enough voter approval, impeachment is not an impossible bar to clear. You’d need conclusive direct evidence of egregious misconduct and abuse of power, overall approval under 30%, and same party approval probably under 60 or even 50 %. Then the self preservation instincts kick in.
Marcopolo
As pretty much everyone has said, impeachment is a political act & God knows Trump & friends have done any number of things already (not just Comey) that if there was a sufficient majority he could be impeached. But also along with most folks here I don’t see m(any) republican congresscritters who’d go down that path & I definitely don’t see Ds getting control of the Senate in 2018. So even if the House flips & articles are brought and approved, they would die in the Senate.
OT a little bit but I am watching the Senate Intel hearing and it all seems like moving chairs around on the Hindenburg with the new acting DFBI being particularly close lipped.
SufferinSuccotash
@kindness: Besides, so what if the Dems do take control of both houses next year? It takes a two/thirds vote to convict in the Senate. Even assuming some Republicans breaking with Trump, the Dems would still be light-years away from a two-thirds majority. In other words, a pointless exercise, just like the Republican effort against Clinton.
Jumbo76
@jheartney:
From a political perspective, though, by the time Dems were in control of Congress as of Jan. 2007, the need to impeach W. was non-existent. This is part of the problem with impeachment in general. If you have Congress, you can do whatever you want, and impeachment just ends up wasting time and resources.
Ian G.
FWIW, Jennifer Rubin, nobody’s idea of a lefty, thinks firing Comey is an act of obstruction of Justice and thinks it’s an impeachable offense.
OzarkHillbilly
Doug!, that’s not why Clinton was impeached, and no he was not impeached for lying about a consensual affair either (that was just the excuse). He was impeached for occupying the Oval Office while being a Democrat.
Ridnik Chrome
@Ian G.: Rubin has been publicly anti-Trump for a while now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SufferinSuccotash: between the elections and hypothetical impeachment would investigations that could, I think almost certainly would, to a lot of damage to trump. Unfortunately, Dems taking the House is far from a sure thing.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A Trump impeachment even with a future Democratic controlled congress faces the same issue this crazy Republican congress faces when they wanted to impeach Obama – the Senate as a body is very reluctant to undo elections.
LAO
@smintheus: Seconded. Obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense.
OGLiberal
Unfortunately, there is nothing written to deal with a shitshow like this because I’m pretty certain the Founders in their wildest nightmares couldn’t have conjured up a scenario like this. Trump could blow up Canada and I still think you wouldn’t get enough GOPers in Congress to turn on him – they like power and they want their tax cuts. So short of the Dems taking back both the House and the Senate, there is really no Constitutional, political or legal solution to what we’re facing.
jheartney
@Jumbo76: What a bizarre thing to say. The Iraq war was ongoing, Gitmo was open for business, the upper executive was in the hands of the likes of David Addison, and Katrina had just demonstrated how much of a disaster it was to leave important federal response agencies in the hands of Bush cronies. There were many reasons to want Bush and Cheney out, not least the upcoming financial crisis.
But Dems in Congress knew they would never get enough GOP Senate votes to convict. So it would have been a waste of time.
sharl
IANAL, but what others say upthread is what I’ve always heard: impeachment is primarily a political act, and the constitutional language behind it is intentionally vague, presumably for that very reason.
Historians including Rick Perlstein (author of “Nixonland”) and Kevin Kruse have been batting this sort of thing around lately on twitter. Perlstein linked to a video (13:11) of Barbara Jordan speaking in 1974 during the House subcommittee proceedings on Nixon’s impeachment, and noted in his tweet that based on Jordan’s justification – based on James Madison’s words – it would be justifiable to start impeachment proceedings against Trump.
But of course, that was then, and this is now. The political environment has changed quite a bit over the ensuing 43 years, and from what few mentions of public polling I’ve seen referenced, there isn’t the stomach for impeachment…yet. So for now there doesn’t seem to be support – neither among the broad public, nor in the majority in Congress – for this fundamentally political act, as much as I wish there were.
schrodingers_cat
@jheartney: Wow, giving up before even the fight has begun. Rs fight dirty and fight till the end. That’s the reason they win.
OGLiberal
To add to my previous comments, if Trump actually went through with his hypothetical and shot somebody to death on Fifth Avenue (would require him to be on Fifth Avenue, of course, a place he hasn’t been since January), he would remain our president until – or unless – the House impeached him and the Senate convicted him. I honestly could see that being to much of a hurdle to overcome with the current GOP led Congress. And ain’t no way he’d take the Nixon route (who was going to be impeached and convicted) and resign first.
jheartney
@schrodingers_cat: Where did I advocate giving up?
Omnes Omnibus
Impeachment is inherently political. If the Dems take the House and Senate in 2018, we are still likely to be short of the 2/3 majority in the Senate needed to remove Minute Maid Mao from office. The question is why impeach in that case?
It brings to my mind the effort to recall Scott Walker. All the work put into the recall campaign would likely have been better used in trying to take back the legislature in 2012.
Starfish
This is how you fill your basket with impeaches.
You note the emoluments clause violations.
You note the obstruction of justice.
And whatever the word is for undermining your government without being treason is relevant.
But some people want to go straight to Amendment 25 of the constitution because Trump is not mentally sound.
SatanicPanic
Like everyone else said, an impeachable offense is whatever congress wants it to be. Andrew Johnson was impeached for firing a guy that congress passed a law trying to prevent him from firing. That’s all it was. So Congress could impeach Trump over pretty much any of the dozens of dubious things he’s done since being elected.
But I think even if they don’t get a conviction it would be great for the country. It would energize Democrats. It would show Republicans that yes, we can do it too. If it comes to the point where Trump was already being impeached, he’d be so weak that he’d be better of resigning, and who knows, he just might.
Jeffro
@OzarkHillbilly:
Why, that sneaky rat bastard, how dare he?
/snark
Sad but true
Bruce K
Realistically, I’d say impeachment of the President becomes an option as soon as the party controlling Congress considers it viable. The GOP overreached on Clinton, whatever benefits they may have gained in the 2000 election, and a Democratic Congress in 2018 (knock on wood) would have to tread carefully, especially since they’d have to have a slam-dunk case to get 67 votes in the Senate, and this is a situation where they absolutely cannot afford to come at the King and miss.
But if circumstances evolve to the point where the GOP’s survival as a political party depends on getting rid of Trump? I could see Ryan and McConnell advancing impeachment to save their own political necks – it’s not like they’ve got any principles extending much beyond themselves. I suppose it’d be a bit like a variation on the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
But I still think it’s good to keep banging the impeachment drum at this point – that when you’ve got a president as depraved and corrupt as the cheeto, it’s rational to talk about the method of removal that was put into the Constitution for just such an event, by the Founding Fathers themselves. The GOP wants to normalize Trump? Time to normalize impeachment. It’s not like Trump got a majority of the votes of the American electorate, is it?
rumpole
The bad acts are legion; among them obstruction of justice, (possibly) treason, and violation of the emoluments clause. The discouraging thing is that the R’s always fall into line. Their agenda (tax cuts for the Koch brothers and others like them) simply cannot pass in a functioning democracy. They know that. Health care showed that. Hell, the elections of W and Trump showed that. Their interests are completely at odds with any investigation. Only a palpable fear of losing power (or its actual loss) will cause the dam to break. The only calculation is power–its accumulation and exercise. Both they and trump seem to have that in common. Nothing else matters.
We are in very dangerous territory. As the other commenters have stated, impeachment is a political decision.
amygdala
@Omnes Omnibus: “Minute Maid Mao”
I tip my hat to you, sir.
Omnes Omnibus
@amygdala: It’s stolen. As much as I would like to take credit, I cannot.
randy khan
@SufferinSuccotash:
I think this has been discussed before, but the only plausible scenario for impeachment and conviction is that the Republicans conclude that Trump has to go. That’s ultimately what got Nixon – the smoking gun tape essentially turned the entire Republican caucus in a couple of days. And that raises an important point, which is that if something like this happens, the Republicans likely will stand with him right until that point is reached, and then it will be a stampede.
Tractarian
IAAL, and I can tell you that if Trump fired Comey with the intent to stop the Russia investigation, that is a crime – obstruction of justice – and most certainly an impeachable offense.
Even though there were good reasons to fire Comey, if stopping the Russia probe was one of the actual reasons Trump made the decision, it is a crime.
Now, you may say, how can you prove Trump’s intent? 99.9 percent of the time, intent is proven at trial with circumstantial evidence. Between all the tweets and unhinged rants, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to go around.
The question isn’t whether the Comey firing was an impeachable offense, its whether there is the political will to carry it out. It is possible (though highly unlikely) that things will get so bad for Trump that the GOP decides they are better off with President Pence running in 2020. Either that, or a Dem takeover of the House in 2018, could lead to impeachment – that is, articles of impeachment passed by a majority of the House.
But GOP acquiescence is the only possible way for Trump to actually be removed before his term ends, because even if Dems take back both houses of Congress in 2018, they would still need GOP votes to convict in the Senate.
Dave
@Omnes Omnibus: It will be literally impossible for Democrats to have a 2/3rds majority in the Senate given the map in 2018, unless I’m seriously misremembering this, even if they won every contest barring some even less likely scenario where a bunch of Republican senators vacate office and their state governor’s put Democrats in their place. Taking house is vital regardless and I think will be doable assuming the system is still functional.
randy khan
@OGLiberal:
My scenario for a Trump resignation is essentially, “You can’t fire me, I quit!” He would use the resignation as a form of self-justification, and would say he’s doing it because he’s about to be wronged by the dastardly Congress.
I assume that the Rs in Congress understand the potential for that to happen, and they would – justifiably – be worried that such a resignation would take some chunk of the base out for at least one election cycle. This is a reason that they might not be willing to act even though it looks like acting is necessary.
amygdala
@Omnes Omnibus: Still grateful for the yuks. Can definitely use ’em amidst this exhausting madness.
Ric Drywall
@SatanicPanic:
I have my doubts about this (and Democrats are already energized!). At the very least, wait until you have a stronger case and at least some GOP support. To impeach now because of the Comey would, I think, be a misstep.
Chris
@Doug!:
They could take back the House and Senate by veto-proof majorities and still nothing would happen. “Look forward not back,” “nation needs to heal,” you know.
D58826
@The Moar You Know: I don’t remember the details from 1998 but the term had a rather specific meaning in English common law at the time the founders included it in the Constitution. But the off-hand cliche that it is whatever a majority of the House (and remember impeachment is the House process vs trial/removal which is the Senate function) is a valid shorthand. So a democratic house in 2019 might impeach on a straight line party vote but unless Der Fuhrer REALLY REALLY goes off the rails, it is very unlikely that even a filibuster proof Democratic majority in the senate would get to the 67 vote threshold to convict.
SatanicPanic
@Ric Drywall: Not now! sometime in 2019, when we’ll have even more to work with
SatanicPanic
@Chris: I highly doubt this will be the case this time. Democrats might be chicken but they’re also afraid of their voters.
D58826
@Dave: D’s are defending 24 seats in 2018, 10 of which are in deep red Trump states. And if GOP sweep those 10 seats then they have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. I haven’t looked at the 2020 map, which I think favors the D’s, but it would be very very hard to retake the Senate in 2020 if the GOP has a good year in 2018.
MJS
@Ian G.: Actually, now that she is criticizing a Republican president, there are many, many people who consider Rubin a “lefty”. Stupid people, to be sure, but they do exist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MJS: Rick Wilson, who made the ad that morphed Max Cleland into Saddam Hussein, is regularly accused of being a wild-eyed lefty by trumpies on twitter
Felonius Monk
IANAL, however lawyers have stated that this is considered Obstruction of Justice and that is an impeachable offense. For reference, refer to the draft bill of impeachment for Richard M. Nixon. The first article was obstruction of justice.
ETA: I haven’t read all the comments yet. Somebody has probably already mentioned this.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: Those democrats got elected to those seats in the first place, it’s kind of weird to assume they’d lose them just because they’re in red states.
different-church-lady
@OGLiberal: Canada? Hell, he could blow up Arkansas and still get their electoral votes.
Cacti
The only two bases for impeachment with clear legal definitions are treason and bribery.
As others have pointed out, apart from those two, impeachable offenses are whatever Congress says they are.
Emily B.
This New Yorker article, “How Trump Could Get Fired,” is a terrific piece: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired A key point: Impeachment is more of a political process than a legal one.
When this article came out a week or two ago, I thought it was somewhat premature. Now it seems very timely.
D58826
@SatanicPanic: True and there is no lock on the GOP sweeping all 10. On the other hand the last time those Senators won was in 2012, a presidential year with high D turnout. 2018 is a midterm so D turnout might be shaky. The main point is that the D’s have a tough map in 2018 and are more likely to lose a few seats than flip the Senate. Now the trump factor might scramble all of that but……
SatanicPanic
@D58826: I know, it’s not going to be easy, just saying that I wouldn’t write them off just yet.
Jumbo76
@jheartney:
Pretty sure this is the point I was making. And let’s be clear: when they took over, Dems didn’t end the Iraq War, close Guantanamo, and heckuva job had been out of office for a while. It would have been a waste of political “capital” to spend time trying to impeach. Org Bush and Cheney.
schrodingers_cat
@SatanicPanic: Don’t you know, if you belong to the purity brigade and/or the doom and gloom brigade, you must always assume the best case scenario for Rs and the worst case scenario for Dems.
? Martin
Here’s what it means:
As noted above, it’s a political act, so what counts is whatever they want to count, but its probably fair to say it needs to be rooted in what might be better understood as ‘dereliction of duty’. Say, failure to nominate key appointees, nominating people that are clearly incompetent, elevating your children to roles ahead of other more deserving individuals, and so on. Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, not for sex.
I would argue that the potential articles of impeachment for Trump is already quite long. I would also argue that if applied to members of congress, it would also be quite long.
Mike Flynn (No, not THAT one)
Unless someone gave F*ckface Von Clownstick a blowjob in the Oval Office, he should be good…
AxelFoley
I see what you did with this thread title, Doug. Shaka Demus and Pliers!
LongHairedWeirdo
@Doug!:
I don’t want to be snarky, but – “how old are you? Were you far from the age of majority during the Clinton impeachment?” is the first response that springs to mind.
Look: let’s lay out the Clinton impeachment, because it’s important to understand just how filthy it was.
Bill Clinton is alleged to have flashed his weiner at a lady, as part of a come-on. This is a really bad idea – what if she was about to be fired for incompetence, and was fired just after this happened? It would open a lawsuit tout de suite. But: it’s not illegal, and not, by itself, able to bring a suit that has actual merit.
There’s no clear evidence that she suffered professionally from this behavior – while it was stupid and wrong (if it happened – remember, Clinton says it didn’t, and a plaintiff may, even in good faith, remember things differently), there was no clear evidence that a quid pro quo was offered, or refused, or that harm came from refusal.
Morally, it’s wrong to pursue this sort of case – the civil courts are not for revenge, they’re for redress. Ethically, I believe a lawyer would be wrong to press a client to pursue this case – the merits are so weak that it might not be allowed to go to a jury. (In fact, this happened – the case was dismissed, and, later, was reopened *only* because of the perjury allegations.)
But some rightwingers decided to bankroll the lawsuit against Clinton. So, now, an annoyance lawsuit has been launched against the President of the United States. That’s horrible when it happens to a private citizen – it’s far nastier to have it done to a political opponent, but since people with direct political power didn’t actually pay for it, it doesn’t quite look like it’s political retribution for the crime of winning the election.
Having brought someone to court on a frivolous basis is a terrible thing – Clinton may have to confess, under oath, that, yeah, he did something ugly and rude, but didn’t flash his weiner. Or maybe he’ll admit he flashed his weiner – who knows? That would be a scandal and an embarrassment, and this is precisely why the courts aren’t supposed to be used for revenge. This is the use of the justice system to harm a person, not to seek redress.
But then they decided to set a perjury trap – having heard rumors he was getting it on with someone who started as a White House intern (I believe she was *not* an intern when they were actually getting it on), they brought both her and him in to force her to testify under oath about that relationship. Now they’re using the justice system’s power to continue to force a scandal that has no real bearing on their case. A “pattern of behavior” of seeking consenting sex doesn’t support “a pattern of behavior” of harassing people. Nevertheless, they did this – and again, if this had been done by people with actual political power, it would have been a hideous thing, attacking a political opponent for daring to have won an election!
This part here is key: facing a perjury trap, he foxed them: he got the court to agree that it was only “having sex” if he touch her for her sexual pleasure. If he touched her because it turned him on to see her come to orgasm, he can still deny that he “had sex” because he wasn’t touching her for *her* pleasure, but his own.
This is, as I understand it (I’m not a lawyer!), a cunning strategy – because his answer would be literally true by the definition he was given, depending on his motivations, this couldn’t be brought to trial for perjury, because a jury should not be allowed to return a “finding of fact” about a statement that can be true depending on the defendant’s state of mind. This is the very definition of a reasonable doubt.
Having dodged their perjury trap, using a method that was likely to be non-prosecutable, they continued to try to embarrass and humiliate him and used the power of the independent prosecutor to dig into this issue.
They brought him before a grand jury, forcing him to say a bunch of embarrassing things (and, of course, they released this information!), and decided that:
1) he’d perjured himself in court (even though he likely hadn’t)
2) he suborned perjury because he’d met with her (NB: they have no real evidence of this – did they even have a “he said/she said” on that?)
3) He perjured himself before the grand jury (because her story and his story were different – wow, two human beings who remember things differently, *that* never happened in the history of the world!), and
4) he suborned perjury in front of the grand jury (see 2))
This was about as baseless as you could ask for, even if it came about cleanly – but it came about because a political party was pushing to use the civil justice system to attack a political opponent, and the power of the court was used to try to embarrass the defendant.
So: while the Constitution says that impeachment should be for “high crimes and misdemeanors” – it basically comes down to “anything the House of Representatives can bring to a vote, and pass”.
I hope and pray that changes someday. But right now? No, there are no guidelines.
Please also note how this abuse of the power of the courts and law enforcement has worsened over the years. Twenty years down the road, prosecutors would get in front of a crowd and say that an innocent woman could certainly be charged with a crime, knowing full well that it’s a lie, and an FBI director could be willing (or pressured into) injecting law enforcement into an election. When the IRS flubs a few investigations into tax exempt status, they can be intimidated with fear of legal repercussions; people can be arrested for laughing during a hearing; these things are now normal, acceptable, and accepted.
TenguPhule
@Jumbo76:
That fucker authorized torture. He needed to be convicted, tried and executed for crimes against humanity, never mind simply impeached.
CM
@Tractarian:
Well said. I will get to your point about obstruction of justice in a moment. But first, it is essential to start with the Constitution. As several here have pointed out, impeachment is in the end essentially a political act based on what a majority in the House and a super majority in the Senate are willing to vote for. However, the grounds for impeachment are actually well defined in the Constitution. Article 2, Section 4 states: “The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Note that there are two specific grounds for impeachment, treason and bribery. Both are crimes against the nation. Treason is actually defined elsewhere in the Constitution — and it is the only crime defined therein. Article 3, Section 3 states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” I don’t want to push this very far now, but Trump’s loud and public invitation to Russia to find and release Hillary’s emails seems like something that gave “aid and comfort” to a foreign nation.
That the Founders were very concerned about bribery is further supported by the emoluments clause. Article 1, Section 9 states, “No … Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them (the United States), shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Again, i don’t want to go very far down this road right now, but we know that Trump and people close to him have been involved in financial transactions worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions, from persons and entities in Russia and other foreign nations.
That brings us to “high crimes.” I agree with Tractarian “that if Trump fired Comey with the intent to stop the Russia investigation, that is a crime – obstruction of justice – and most certainly an impeachable offense.” I heard two serious scholars interviewed on MSNBC last night make the same point. Speaking of high crimes, an aside — I have come to think that the key line in the campaign last fall was Trump’s boast that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and his supporters would be fine with that.
Finally, there are “misdemeanors.” There was much legal analysis of this word back during the Nixon period. I am not a lawyer and would not put too much faith in my memory, but here are three points. First, the adjective “high” modifies the noun “misdemeanors” as well as “crimes.” Second, misdemeanors should be viewed as meaning misdeeds — serious misdeeds. Third, I believe there was an early draft of the Constitution that had the phrase “against the state” at the end of this phrase. Treason and bribery are crimes against the state (the nation), and “high crimes and misdemeanors” should be viewed in that context. The Founders were aware that the President, using his great powers, might do something that was not a crime like obstruction of justice or murder (not to mention treason or bribery), but should nevertheless be an impeachable offense.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
Not gonna happen.
Trump is the spiteful type. He’d try full on seizure of power by any means, no matter how miniscule the chance of success, rather then give it up. The moment it looks like Congress is actually a threat to him, expect him to break the law to eliminate them.
TenguPhule
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Never gonna happen. They’re already in too deep with their Devil’s Bargain. Trump goes down, they all go down. And they know it.
They might hate and fear him, but they’re never gonna turn on him because he has their collective balls in a vise and he and they know it.
ronrab
I think it’s important impeachment be attempted at some point, even if it’s plainly mathematically impossible to convict in the Senate. There needs to be an official record that Trump’s activities were recognized as illegal and unacceptable, for the benefit of the electorate, observers around the world, and future US citizens. Democrats failing to do anything in such an extreme case will be remembered and pointed to the next time the GOP tries this again.
Also, the first thing I’ve seen everyone with actual legal experience reference are the articles of impeachment brought against Nixon, even though he resigned before he was actually impeached. Precedent matters.
dogwood
Impeachment is a highly complicated political process that people seem to think is an easy answer to a horrible political situation. It’s not. It makes some people feel good, but doesn’t result in much else unless there is massive Senate support.
dlw32
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
Grounds for impeachment are meant to relate to anything you do “wrong” while in office. It can simply be something unbecoming an official of the government or simple incompetence. Or it could be a crime.
Then tricky bit is that the House has to vote to move articles of impeachment. So long as the House is Republican I don’t see it happening.
janelle
@The Moar You Know: 23 GOP votes is all that would be needed, not 46 (193 + 23 = 216, which is a majority in the current total)
But that ain’t happening either.
janelle
Trump could theoretically be impeached by the House in 2019, but there’s 0% chance of him being removed by the Senate, even if Democrats miraculously took back control of the upper chamber next year. It takes 67 senators to remove the president, and at best the Democrats might (but most likely won’t) have 51 seats after the midterm elections. No chance in hell they could get 16 Republicans on board with removal.
Short of his voluntary resignation (HAHAHAHA!!!), we’re stuck with this turd until 2020.
janelle
@OGLiberal: Even taking back the Senate would be insufficient, because a 2/3 majority (67) is needed to remove the president after he is impeached. There’s no chance they’ll control anywhere close to 67 seats in the Senate after the midterms, even in the absolute best case scenario. Trump is never going to be removed from office by Congress.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I don’t think it’s likely that he resigns, but if he does, I’m pretty sure that’s how it will happen.
In my scenario, he’s reached the point where he has essentially no support. (Just for argument’s sake, it turns out there’s a tape of him talking to Putin and setting out a clear quid pro quo so awful that even the Republicans can’t ignore it.) He’s lost Congress completely, and he doesn’t have any support from the top ranks in the military or law enforcement to, oh, arrest Congress or declare martial law. That means his actual choices are to resign or be convicted in an impeachment trial.
janelle
@TenguPhule: Executed?
No. Unless you want to be that which you hate. Tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the rest of his life is sufficient justice for me.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
This isn’t really the point of this thread, but all the same, I’d like to say here that I love Maxine Waters. She’s one of my favorite people in the world. I live in Virginia, on the other side of the country from her district, but a week or so ago, I called her office just to tell them how much I love her and how thankful I am for the work that she’s doing and the things she’s been willing to say. My guess is that it’s hard and maybe even a little scary to be the first one to say the truth, but she doesn’t shrink from it. We’re lucky to have her.
janelle
@Omnes Omnibus: An impeachment process could force him via subpoena to lay a whole lot of cards on the table that he doesn’t want exposed. Like his tax returns, for one thing. I agree, it wouldn’t ultimately result in his removal from office, but it could absolutely halt the rest of his presidency and destroy the GOP by exposing them as enablers of a criminal for a generation.
kindness
Am I alone in thinking Game of Thrones will have a more plausible ending than the Trump presidency?
Lavocat
An “impeachable offense” is whatever 50% + 1 of the U.S. House of Representatives says it is. Period. This is a POLITICAL matter, NOT a legal one. It’s really that simple.
Sergio Lopez-Luna
@Ugh: Yep
LongHairedWeirdo
@janelle: I don’t agree with the death penalty, but, given this nation does have and impose the death penalty, and given that George W enthusiastically applied it, I can’t argue with calls for his execution for crimes that merit execution. Not for authorizing torture – but for starting a war in which many people died needlessly? Yeah, I can’t argue with that.
Alas, it’s considered okay to murder if you’re President and send in the military to do the killing.
(NB: if a soldier(/airmen/sailor…) following lawful orders in the normal course of warfare, kills someone, that’s not murder – but if they were ordered into that situation by someone who lied, the order-giver has committed murder in a moral sense, if not the legal sense.)
No Drought No More
I was incommunicado over the weekend of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, and initially had some trouble piecing together what had happened after I finally did tune in to the network news. I remember how shocked I was to hear Ted Kennedy invoke impeachment as a plausible consequence of the firng of Cox, Richardson, and Ruckleshaus. Even believing (as I did by that time) that The Trickster was guilty as sin, the prospect seemed almost surreal. But times have changed. When I first heard Waters declare last January that Trump was likely to be impeached for his Russian connections, I merely took it in stride as being the first bit of good news I’d heard since the sonofbitch was elected.
NCSteve
@Doug!: Basically, it means any betrayal of the public trust by a public official or abuse of the power conferred by public office. The point of the phrase was to broaden grounds for impeachment beyond acts that met the stringent elements of some particular crime.
But no, there are no guidelines. It’s whatever the House wants it to be and, ultimately, what two thirds of the Senate agrees that it is. The Senate is not merely sitting as trier of fact, but, also as the court determining the legal sufficiency of the charges forwarded from the House.
The Wikipedia article on this is an unusually good one (the “who?” and “what’s?” of the pedantic Wikipedia citation Nazis notwithstanding). At least for the moment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
NCSteve
@Doug!: @CM: Really think you need to get into Madison’s minutes and Federalist 64-66 to get a sense of what the Founders had in mind, not just do a textual analysis.
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors” is a phrase borrowed from English law that refers to the performance of any act by a public official that represents a breach of the public trust or an abuse of power, ordinary crimes included, but not being exclusive. It was intended to be expansive, not restrictive.