Friends, like you I'm sick of hearing about impeachment. Lindsey Graham said it best: it's a "crock," and the sooner this country moves on, the better. That being so, the House of Representatives, which sadly Democrats control, does have the "sole Power of Impeachment," and thus, if the House votes to impeach, we have to go through the motions. My latest article, soon to appear in
American Greatness, considers the merits of the Democrats' case through the lens of their two articles of impeachment. I find the arguments for impeachment severely wanting, as you might imagine. See if you agree.
The Democrats Want To Impeach
President Trump...Because He Made Politics Political
As Democrats in
the House of Representatives gird themselves to vote for articles of
impeachment against President Trump — potentially booting him out
of office and nullifying the results of the 2016 election —
Americans should reflect on their audacity.
Neither of the
articles of impeachment references a specific crime in any statute
book. Instead, the Democratic leadership has made up two brand new
offenses: “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress”.
What they have in common, in addition to their novelty, is their
vagueness, which makes them profoundly unsuitable to serve as the
grounds for the cancellation of the people's will, as expressed in
the last presidential election.
With respect to
“abuse of power,” while the media has obsessed over questions of
a “quid pro quo” involving pressure on Ukraine to investigate the
Bidens in return for military aid, the truth is that the substance of
the Democrats' charges relates to Trump's motivations, not his
actions. Pressuring foreign governments to act in certain ways is
absolutely normal in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It is,
therefore, the Democrats' charge, as stated in the article of
impeachment, that Trump pressured Ukraine to “announce
investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election
prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United
States Presidential election to his advantage,” that really
matters. In other words, Trump acted “for corrupt purposes in
pursuit of personal political benefit...[He] compromised the national
security of the United States...[and] ignored and injured the
interests of the Nation.” That, at the end of the day, is the
substance of the Democrats' case against President Trump; he betrayed
the country and his oath of office.
The most obvious
problem here is that the Democrats have advanced no proof that
President Trump's Ukraine policy is or was guided by his desire to
win the 2020 election. They consider this notion to be incontestable,
since, by process of elimination, they can think of no other reason
why anyone would suspect the illustrious Biden family of wrongdoing.
This is a long way from proving President Trump's corrupt
motivations, however.
But there is a
deeper, more fundamental flaw in the Democrats' “abuse of power”
case against the President. We should recall that every President,
and every member of Congress, is subject to election and reelection.
It is seldom the case that any elected official will make important
decisions without reference to his or her “personal political”
interests. Moreover, whether those decisions, taken in part to
advance one's political career, ultimately redound to the benefit or
harm of the nation is inherently subjective.
The Democrats
have thus advanced a new standard for impeachment — that no
politician should ever behave politically — which is, on its face,
impossible to sustain because of its ambiguity and its
incompatibility with political reality. How many actions of President
Obama, for instance, were derided by Republicans as motivated by
“personal political” motives? How many, according to Republicans,
“harmed” the nation? Democrats are plunging us into an
impeachment maelstrom, wherein any federal officeholder could be, and
perhaps will be, impeached on the slightest provocation, if the House
of Representatives is ill-disposed towards him or her and suspects
that their underlying motivations were “political”.
The truth is,
therefore, that this new, improvised, and ambiguous philosophy of
impeachment is itself an “abuse of power.” It's propagators
should be punished accordingly, but not through a politicized
impeachment process. They should be evicted from office by the voters
at the earliest opportunity: in 2020.
The same logic
applies with respect to the Democrats' second article of impeachment,
which charges President Trump with “obstruction of Congress.” The
Democrats allege that Trump has “directed the unprecedented,
categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the
House of Representatives pursuant to its 'sole Power of
Impeachment'.” They further allege that “no President has ever
ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to
obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of
Representatives to investigate...”
The first flaw in
this logic is that Congress could, if it sorely wished to compel the
testimony of any administration official, or obtain any relevant
document, litigate the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. If, as
the Congress claims, it is unconstitutional to deny the Judiciary
Committee, say, the testimony of Mike Pompeo or John Bolton vis-a-vis
the impeachment inquiry, then why not solicit the federal courts, up
to and including the Supreme Court, to issue an order compelling them
to comply with their obligations? That is precisely how the standoff
with President Nixon in 1974 was ultimately resolved: the Supreme
Court ordered Nixon to hand over the Oval Office tapes, and he did
so. Congress could pursue the same remedy now, but it refuses,
because it is in a headlong rush to impeach President Trump — for
what are transparently “personal political” reasons: Congress
hates Trump, but it also wants to dispose of impeachment before the
start of an election year.
Once again,
though, there is a deeper, more fundamental problem with the
Democrats' case against President Trump for “obstruction of
Congress.” It is absolutely normal for presidents to refuse to turn
over documentation to Congress, and to order administration officials
not to appear at hearings. This is called “executive privilege.”
The executive branch need not accede to every request of Congress for
information, because there is a presumption that the proper
functioning of the executive requires a degree of privacy and
discretion.
The Judiciary
Committee's fig leaf to conceal this gaping hole in their rationale
for impeachment is that Trump's non-cooperation with House
investigations has been “unprecedented” and “comprehensive” —
two more ambiguous standards that, once again, could arguably be
applied to any President, in any era, failing to comply with a
Congressional subpoena for any reason. A disagreement about the
extent of executive privilege, however, should not constitute an
impeachable offense.
Take the “Fast
and Furious” scandal of 2010-2014. The Obama administration decided
to sell guns to Mexican criminals in order to obtain intelligence on
the drug cartels for which some of them worked. The intelligence
never materialized, but a Border Patrol agent was killed by one of
the guns. Republicans in the House of Representatives understandably
wished to obtain testimony and documents from the Obama
administration about this travesty, but the Obama Department of
Justice refused to comply, citing executive privilege. Ultimately,
the House held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress,
and a federal court upheld Congress' right to receive the
information.
By the logic of
the Democrats now sitting on the Judiciary Committee, this
“unprecedented” failure to comply with a Congressional
investigation should have been impeachable. The fact that a federal
court found that executive privilege did not apply in this case
suggests that the actions of the Attorney General, and presumably of
the President, were unconstitutional — and yet neither man was
impeached. This is because Republicans respect the gravity of
impeachment and preferred to let the American people render a verdict
on the fitness of President Obama and his Attorney General. Now,
though, Trump-hating Democrats prefer to substitute their own
judgment for that of the American electorate. They would happily
impeach Donald Trump on any pretext, because it is what their
infuriated electoral base demands.
In the end, the
Democrats in the House of Representatives have invented two novel
justifications for the removal of a president from office, and they
have crafted these justifications in such a way that they can be used
against any president, now and in the future, who rubs Congress the
wrong way. By jettisoning Congress's traditional restraint on matters
of impeachment, and seeking to remove President Trump for alleged
wrongdoing that is not susceptible to proof beyond a reasonable
doubt, Democrats are opening the floodgates to a wave of “personal
political” impeachments that may arise in the decades ahead. Future
American politicians may thus view the results of U.S. federal
elections not as determinative of the country's leadership, but as
mere suggestions from the voters, which may be vetoed by our
all-knowing political elite. By no means should this very real abuse
of power by House Democrats be tolerated by the American people.
To
save our democracy, therefore, we must defeat the campaign to impeach
and remove our 45th
President, Donald J. Trump.
