The Defense Rests: GOP Leaders Reportedly Considering Not Calling a Single Witness

If trump loses 1/3 of his swing voters from swing districts, then he loses in 2020.

 

Like the ones not evident in the impeachment articles?

 

Right, but my question is, does the chief executive have a legal basis to ask the supreme court to intervene and declare an impeachment proceeding unconstitutional because it does not adhere to constitutional standards? I mean, where else can a president go if the impeachment itself is unlawful?

 

If you were on the supreme court and the president were impeached for walking across the street on a Tuesday, would you even review the matter if Trump petitioned for review?

I would review it and if the charges were that lame, I'd hear the other side, but if the Congress replied that "it doesn't have to be treason, bribery or a high crime or misdemeanor, he walked across the street on a Tuesday and we don't like it," then SOMEBODY would need to point out that it is the supreme court which decides what the constitution means (Marbury v. Madison), and that's not what it means." Congress having sole power to impeach means that only they can impeach. That's not the same as saying "They can impeach for any reason."

Otherwise, "We think Hillary would have been a better President" becomes an acceptable basis for impeachment.

 

Wrong!

Your BLOTUS was the MOTIVATION for Progressives to GOTV which they have been doing since early 2017 and are not going to stop until he is long gone and all of the GOP Minority Voter Suppression is eliminated nationwide.

 

NOWHERE!

The SCOTUS has OPTED OUT of being involved in POLITICS!

https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-2/56-judicial-review-of-impeachments.html

 

As Derodeo has noted, I just don't see how you get past the Justiciability question of that review. Much like the Supreme Court decided that they are unable to even review Political Gerrymandering because it is a political question, the question of whether a specific act can be classified as impeachable conduct is a political question.

 

That's a general statement I'm afraid, not a personal insult.

People who suffer from it, I suppose, could interpret what I said in that way I suppose.

 

Yeah we'll see about that.

 

This is how I would try to get past the justiciability argument:

The Nixon case cited in that Justia article above says, or at least the article says the following:

The Court listed “reasons why the Judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, were not chosen to have any role in impeachments,” and elsewhere agreed with the appeals court that “opening the door of judicial review to the procedures used by the Senate in trying would expose the political life of the country to months, or perhaps years, of chaos.” 506 U.S. at 234, 236.


Procedures refers to things like how many witnesses may be called, in what order, who presents its case first, how much times does each side have. What rules control the admissibility of documents.

Complaining that impeachment articles like "walking across the street on Tuesday" or "We would really prefer that Hillary had been elected by the college of electors," is not an allowable basis to impeach under article 2 is not a "procedural argument."

Or what if the Congress said "only 51% of the senate needs to vote to convict and remove this President from office"?

Is that a "procedural matter" that the Supreme court would decline to weigh in on?

 

And I'm sure the Senators that may be running against DT in the general election will recuse themselves as they have a clear conflict of interest.

 

Not if he gets 30%+ of the black vote. Trump is in a much stronger position today than then, with real accomplishments for anyone without TDS to see. And your candidate next year is likely to be weaker than Hillary, as pathetic as she was.

 

So IG Horowitz was wrong when he agreed fraudulent evidence was given to the FISA court and exculpatory evidence was altered?

Most likely Jan. 2025.

LOL, your side tried to suppress the votes of 63,000,000 Trump voters with the Deep State soft coup attempt.

 

Deleted reply to wrong post.

 

Conspiracy bovine excrement duly noted and ignored for obvious reasons.

 

You are applying a judicial practice to a political activity.

 

I am saying all good people use that standard regardless of the context.

It's a legal standard because it's a moral standard.

 

I like your post even though I'm not sure that morality underlies the presumption if innocence. I suspect it us more rooted in the logical impossibility of proving a negative, and it goes waaayyyy back:

The sixth-century Digest of Justinian (22.3.2) provides, as a general rule of evidence: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat[1]—"Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies".[2] It is there attributed to the second and third century jurist Paul. It was introduced in Roman criminal law by emperor Antoninus Pius.[3]

Wiki

 

So that kind of thinking developed about 300 years after Christianity was legalized by Rome?

 

Nope!

That was about 150 years BEFORE Christianity was legalized by Rome.

 

I actually thought about that, and you may be right. I am open to suggestions either way. Of course, the ancient Greeks and presumably all civilizations before Christ had some some sense of morality. Also, I jumped to a link to the Code of Hammurabi, and it too contained a reference to the presumption if innocence:

Hammurabi’s Code also set several valuable legal precedents that have survived to this day. The compendium is among the earliest legal documents to put forth a doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty.” In fact, the Code places the burden of proof on the accuser in extreme fashion when it says, “If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.”

(I wonder if Trump reads that latter provision before bed every night and let's his mind drift to Adam Schiff and his allegations of collusion with Russia.)

 

I'm not sure Trump reads at all. He has people for that.

 

Yes but it is a stretch to think of politics in moral terms.

 

If we don't think of it in moral terms we'll mever have moral leaders.

 

Ruh roh ....

But an indefinite delay would pose a serious problem. Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.

If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.

That’s because “impeachment” under the Constitution means the House sending its approved articles of to the Senate, with House managers standing up in the Senate and saying the president is impeached.

As for the headlines we saw after the House vote saying, “TRUMP IMPEACHED,” those are a media shorthand, not a technically correct legal statement. So far, the House has voted to impeach (future tense) Trump. He isn’t impeached (past tense) until the articles go to the Senate and the House members deliver the message.

A president who has been genuinely impeached must constitutionally have the opportunity to defend himself before the Senate. That’s built into the constitutional logic of impeachment, which demands a trial before removal.

To be sure, if the House just never sends its articles of impeachment to the Senate, there can be no trial there. That’s what the “sole power to impeach” means.

But if the House never sends the articles, then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached. And that’s probably not the message Congressional Democrats are hoping to send.



https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/a...-delay-could-be-serious-problem-for-democrats

[This article is by Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard and one of the experts who terrified for the D's before the House Judiciary Committee.]