It would be helpful to distinguish the technical violations that rack up the “three felonies a day” statistic from actual serious crimes. I’ll even stipulate that perjury generally falls into the latter category, but the caveat must be front and center.
The interesting scenario is that it could be the Republicans trying their best to remove him from office and the Democrats doing their best to keep Trump in office, thinking that he enhances their chances for 2020.
It’s never happened, but nothing prevents it.
You’d think so, but then, Trump’s tax lawyers weren’t competent enough to even file the right paperwork for his foundation. He’s never been any good at picking employees based on their actual merits, and I see no reason to expect him to start now.
Note that Judge Walter Nixon was impeached and convicted for lying to a grand jury by many of the Democratic Senators that within 2 years would claim perjury is not an impeachable offense.
You’re new here, so I’m going to give this a pass. In the future please be sure to follow moderator instructions in a given thread. The post #37 immediately prior to yours stated that the subject of Bill Clinton was off limits for this thread. Please do not continue this hijack.
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Was it incompetence or Trump not wanting to do the audits and other controls required by the State?
This also is continuing the hijack. Please take note of moderator instructions in a given thread.
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I think it is important to point out – as I virtually always do in these threads – that the person who popularized the phrase about impeachment being whatever the House decides it is – Gerald Ford – is often misrepresented in what he meant that phrase to mean.
It is very common to interpret the phrase as meaning, “The President gave the stink-eye to the Speaker – let’s impeach him!” and that no quibble with such a move would have a basis in constitutional text.
But Ford’s speech on the matter makes clear that he saw a significant difference between the standard for impeachment as the Constitution intends for judges – that they hold their office during “good behavior” – and what the Constitution intends for civil officers, and that the barrier to impeachment for civil officers is higher than for judges.
That being said, he generally acknowledges that if the Congress went off and impeached the President for throwing shade at the Speaker, nobody could effectively overturn such an act despite Congress exceeding the direction given in the Constitution.
Some other felony examples.
With all due respect, it’s very difficult to talk about Presidential impeachment without discussing historical examples. Of which we have only two: Andrew Johnson, and umm, that other guy.
Honestly I did not mean it as a hijack. It was meant more as a reflection of the political nature of an impeachment and trial. Basically Person A was convicted of perjury to a grand jury (IIRC 98-0) but two years later some of those in the Senate said it was not impeachable. I didn’t even mention Clinton by name in order to avoid it being seen as a “Clinton impeachment” post.
Plus I think it addresses the OP’s question “What might be reality-based issues that would warrant impeachment?” Trump is involved in a lot of lawsuits so is perjury impeachable? Some say yes and some say “depends on his political party” or “is he a judge or a President”?
So please answer this: are we not allowed to discuss if perjury is an impeachable offense?
I’m going to say no. There have been two notes already that specify that involving Bill Clinton in this thread is verboten. The reason I issued the first one is that this sort of thread will find it easy to be hijacked into a discussion of Clinton where the OP is discussing other causes of a possible Trump impeachment. Stick to the OP and don’t get side tracked.
That’d only work if the state didn’t know about the Foundation at all. But its existence was public knowledge and they still didn’t have the proper paperwork, which increased (indeed, guaranteed) the chance of unfavorable attention from the state, not decrease it.
Of course, it’s still possible that Trump’s lawyers were competent and advised him on the correct way to do things but that Trump ignored them because Trump. But the effect there is the same, and he’d be just as likely to ignore his lawyers on other critical matters.
Since Trump doesn’t drink (I believe), being an alcoholic would not seem to apply.