The impeachment is over. It was unfair and constitutionally incoherent dangerous. The Hate Trump Media Mob said Abuse of Power about Trump`s behaviour, but that is a lie. It is the House that has abused its power. Not Trump.
The U.S Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel said this on the Senate floor regarding the Senate Impeachment Trial yesterday:
«These past weeks, the Senate has grapped with as grave a subject as we ever consider: A request from a majority in the House of Representatives to remove the president.
«The Framers took impeachment extremely seriously. But they harbored no illusions that these trials would always begin for the right reasons. Alexander Hamilton warned that the demon of faction would extend his scepter over the House of Representatives at certain seasons.
«He warned that an intemperate or designing majority in the House might misuse impeachment as a weapon of ordinary politics rather than an emergency tool of last resort.
McConnell said it`s the House that has abused its power. Not Trump.
«They called the Senate, quote; the most fit depositary of this important trust. Tomorrow, we will know whether that trust was well placed.
«The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us. Here was reporting in April of 2016; Donald Trump isn`t even the Republican nominee yet….. (but) Impeachment is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editoras, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.
Did you see that? The impeachement started long before he was elected. Huh…. (editors note).
«Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump`s inauguration: The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.
«The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced. This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged High Crimes and Misdemeanors included things like being impolite to the press and to professional athletes.
«This insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process relutantly begun because of withheld foreign aid. No, Washington Democrats position on this President has been clear for years.
«Their position was obvious when they openly rooted for the Mueller investigation to tear our country apart were disappointed when the facts proved otherwise. It was obvious when they sought to impeach this President over and over.
«Here`s their real position; Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a High Crime or Misdemeanor the moment he defeated Secretary Clinton in the 2016 election. That is the original sin of this presidency: That he won and they lost.
«Ever since, the nation has suffered through a grinding campaign against our norms and institutions from the same people who keep shouting that our norms and institutions need defending.
«A campaign to degrade our democracy and deligitimize our elections from the same people who shout that confidence in our democracy must be paramount.
«We have watched a major American political party adopt the following absurd proposition: We think this president is a bull in a china shop, so we`re going to drive a bulldozer through the china shop to get rid of him.
«This fever led to the most rushed, least fair, and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in Amerian history.
« The House inquiry into President Nixon spanned many months. The special prosecutors investigation added many more months. With President Clinton, the independent counsel worked for years.
«Here`s how Chairman Schiff put it back in October. Quote: Any action,,,,, that forces us to litigate, or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.
«That is nonsense. Impeachment is not some magical constitutional trump card that melts away the seperations between the branches of government. The Framers did not leave the House a secret constitutional steamroller that everyone somehow overlooked for 230 years.
«When Congress subpoenas executive-branch officials with questions of privilege, the two sides either reach an accommodation or take to the courts.
«That is the way this works.
«The abuse of power charge is just as unpersuasive and dangerous.
«By passing that article, House Democrats have into a temptation that every previous House has resisted. They impeached a president without even alleging a crime known to our laws.
(How in the world is it possible? Editors note).
«I do not subscribe to the legal theory that impeachment requires a violation of a criminal statue. But there are powerful reasons why, for 230 years, every presidential impeachment did allege a criminal violation.
«The Framers explcitly rejected impeachment for maladministration – a general charge under English law that basically encompassed bad management; a sort of general vote of no confidence. Except in the most extreme circumstances, except for acts that overwhelmingly shocked the national conscience, the Framers decided presidents must serve at the pleasure of the electorate and not the pleasure of House majorities.
«As Hamilton wrote: it is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body.
«So House Democrats sailed into new and dagerous water. The first impeachment unbound by the criminal law. Any House that felt it needed to take this radical step owed the country the most fair and painstaking process; the most rigorous investigation; the most bipartisan effort. Instead, we got the opposite. The exact opposite.
«The House Managers argued that the President could not have been acting in the national interest because he acted inconsistently with their own conception of the national interest, a conception shared by some of the President`s subordinates.
«This does not even approach a case for the first presidential removal in Amercan history.
«Such an act cannot rest alone on the exercise of a constitutional power, combined with concerns about whether the President`s motivations were public or personal, and a disagreement over whether the exercise of the power was in the national interests.
«The Framers gave our nation an ultimate tool for evaluating a President`s character and policy decisions. They`re called elections.
«Frankly, it is hard to believe that House Democrats ever really thought this reckless and precedent-breaking process would yield 67 votes to cross the Rubicon. Was their vision so clouded by partisanship that they really believed this would be anywhere near enough for the first presidential removal in American history?
«Or was success besides the point? Was this all an effort to hijack our institutions for a month-long political rally? Either way, the demon of faction, has been on full display. But now it is time for him to exit the stage.
«We have indeed witnessed an abuse of power: A grave abuse of power by just the kind of House majority the Framers warned us about. So tomorrow, the Senate must do what we were created to do. We have done our duty. We have considered all arguments. We have studied the «mountain of evidence.» And tomorrow, we will vote.
«We must vote to reject the House`s abuse of power. Vote to protect our institutions.
«Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the Framers design to rubble.
«Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic.
«I urge every one of our coleagues to cast the vote that the facts in evidence, the Constitution, and the common good clearly require.
«Vote to acquit the President of these charges.»
Ket Garden
Shiny bull 