Im not going to argue BRD, we’ve done that. But assuming there’s a mixture of legitimate and corrupt intent - would you think that any element of legitimate intent would mitigate the corrupt intent, if proven? Like, let’s say the President is on tape saying, “I did this 99% for corrupt purposes, but 1% because it’s the right thing to do.” Would you judge that to be a non-crime?
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A few years ago, the House held Eric Holder in contempt because he would not turn over documents (among other things). The resolution authorized the House to sue for the documents.
Just based on those facts, would you judge it illegitimate for the House to seek criminal charges against Holder because they had not tried to sue, and it was merely a committee subpoena that Holder was not complying with?
He is a Constitutional scholar of long standing. By his own estimation, he is one who has a unique view, the Constitution is flat, and the Sun orbits the Oval Office.
And your description may well be cited, as supportive of the concept that Dershowitz is a Constitutional scholar, by any number of Trump fans who are capable of performing a Google search for “Constitutional scholar.”
(Seriously, check out r/The_Donald subreddit in a couple of days, and you may well find it.)
Sounds reasonable to me. I’ve never been there, myself–I would describe my courage in recommending that others go there as being akin to the courage with which Donald Trump faced his various draft notices.
Even without a formal mechanism, if some law applies to Mr. Giuliani then Mr. Giuliani is required to follow the rules. If Mr. Giuliani is acting in official capacity as an agent of the United States, within the scope of his official duties, then Mr. Giuliani is entitled to absolute immunity and the United States itself is accountable for his actions… to the extent that the United States waives its own sovereign immunity. The remedy in this case would be legislative. If those rules are actually embedded in the Constitution, there will necessarily be some form of relief available to the wronged party because for every wrong, there is a remedy.
I have a couple hypotheticals in the following spoiler, since I assume most people reading this thread (possibly you, too) don’t want to scroll past so many paragraphs of my opinion on some obscure legal question:
[SPOILER]Let us pretend that Mr. Giuliani is appointed special envoy to Ukraine, and upon arrival in Kyiv the President instructs him to schedule a call with President Zelensky on the next Wednesday. Mr. Giuliani cancels an existing Tuesday appointment between an American businessman and the Ukrainian president at the embassy, based on an honest mistake that the President to President call would be on Wednesday. This cancellation means the businessman loses his contract in Ukraine. Can the businessman sue Mr. Giuliani for screwing up his plans? No, Mr. Giuliani had the right to manage appointments at the embassy under proper circumstances, and is not liable if he falls into error provided he acted out of a sense of public duty and not malice. See parallels in Kendall v. Stokes, 3 How. 87, at 99 (1845).
Next let’s say that Mr. Giuliani, using his role as special envoy, circulates among Ukrainian government officials a pamphlet accusing a U.S. citizen of corrupt activity in Ukraine and telling the Ukrainian government the United States is willing to cooperate should they choose to investigate. The pamphlet contains factual errors and ultimately no investigation comes out of it. The citizen, later catching word of this, sues Mr. Giuliani for defamation and violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Is Mr. Giuliani liable?
This example is more complicated. I don’t see a reason to even entertain the Fourth Amendment claim if neither the U.S. nor Ukraine actually makes a search or seizure. Regarding defamation, I think Mr. Giuliani would be entitled to qualified immunity, meaning you have to prove malicious intent to win the claim. A special envoy is within his duties to inform a foreign government of U.S. citizens’ activities. The presence of factual errors in these communications does not imply malice. I cite Scheuer v. Rhodes in support of my opinion here, 416 U.S. 232.
Now let’s say Mr. Giuliani goes ahead and personally investigates this citizen, and without a warrant signed by a judge or anything coming close to probable cause or exigent circumstances, he busts open the citizen’s offices in Ukraine and cleans out the filing cabinets. The U.S. citizen who owns those offices and files sues Mr. Giuliani for blatantly violating his Fourth Amendment rights, claiming Mr. Giuliani didn’t have the authority to enter his buildings or seize his documents. Is Mr. Giuliani liable? Absolutely. It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Giuliani, the special envoy to Ukraine, had any authority to perform a law enforcement activity such as breaking and entering or seizing documents. I think the President could delegate the law enforcement powers to Mr. Giuliani (this would be an unsettled question legally), but even if Mr. Giuliani had such powers, he could not stay within his official duties under the Constitution of the United States while violating that same document. Breaking and entering a U.S. citizen’s buildings and seizing his property is unconstitutional without a warrant of probable cause or at least exigent circumstances. If no remedy is available to the U.S. citizen under existing law, a claim of action is available against Mr. Giuliani personally. See Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).[/SPOILER]
I wouldn’t say that Lev Parnas is an agent of the United States. He appears to be a private citizen, and the DoS OIG’s mission is to be the watchdog for DoS activities. If there was a Hatch Act violation, or the OIG suspected interactions with Mr. Parnas were interfering with the department’s duties, then OIG could look into those interactions. If we’re talking about a Logan Act violation, that’s not the OIG’s responsibility, in my opinion.
It is also worth noting that transparency yields a bit when we get into foreign policy and national security.
I will admit it, there is a potential for confusion and waste and ineffectiveness overall. But there is also the same potential when too many people and too many internal policies are involved, sometimes it is appropriate to bring in one person to handle an issue.
I don’t think the President is quite like a CEO. It’s more like a CEO that can only be fired for cause, and only specific causes at that. Notably, being ineffective in the opinion of the people or even the Senate is not one of the causes that the President can be fired for. We have a different procedure to remove ineffective presidents which requires the complicity of the Vice President and Congress, at the very least.
ETA: I realize I didn’t address this last point, I’ll try and find time to do that later.
I don’t know. It seems like right now we don’t have a method to remove a bad potus.
Impeachment needs a crime, and eye witnesses, but ones that are prevented from being present in the trial. Tough one.
25th Amendment needs potus to be drooling or peeing in public long enough for his minders to lose control of the narrative.
So potus who refuses to do his job is A OK. Potus who is good at cover up will be OK. People who lie will be better off than truth sayers. The cheaters will be better off than the democrats.
I consider myself a political junkie and on these online boards reading and dissecting what is happening. It’s the opposite to my real life interactions at work or some people I’m friendly with though because even though many don’t like Trump at all, they are pretty switched off politically. There was quite a lot of happy reactions when the House voted to impeach Trump and they saw it all on the news but for the impeachment trial itself only a few are following it while the majority opinion seems to be totally irreverent and bored.
The chain of command heirarchy was designed to deal with this. Too few, and too many, are both problems. The chain means you don’t have to guess about this, for yourself or anyone else in the org. Beforehand going in, during the op, and then after it makes things much clearer for others in the organization. That’s why it’s mandatory.
Trying to avoid detection by your own people, for a potus, this is circumstantial evidence pointing towards guilt. You can’t overcome this via this line.
But Rudy wasn’t acting in any official capacity, so the rest of your post is moot. He wasn’t appointed to any position or office, he was not a special envoy. We know this because he wrote it down, quite emphatically.
In regards to your hypotheticals, Rudy G wasn’t appointed special envoy. It’s also not typically a special envoy’s job to investigate possible criminal acts by US citizens, nor to weed out corruption in foreign governments.
Herein lies the problem – if Rudy Giuliani opens your suitcase at the airport when you’re not looking and finds a brick of weed, is the DA going to throw out the evidence because it was a 4th amendment violation? Or will the DA claim that Rudy G was acting as a private citizen and your beef is directly with him? And what are you going to sue him for, breaking and entering a suitcase? Will the head of the FBI discipline Rudy G for conducting an unlawful search, like they would if a federal agent had done the same thing? Who knows! Trump can claim he’s acting in an official capacity when it suits him, and claim to barely know him when that also suits him.
You have a very libertarian outlook on this issue here – that if Rudy Giuliani violates someone’s rights, the courts will sort it out. I think that’s awfully optimistic. Just imagine how chaotic the world would be if the FBI hired a bunch of independent contractors who maybe or maybe aren’t acting in an official capacity as they go about looking for crime. That way they can claim whatever status best suits the case at hand and if anyone has a problem with it they can spend years mired in court. No, there’s a reason we don’t do things that way, that the FBI has a code of ethics and legal guidelines, and agents are required to follow those rules at all times, even off the clock.
To reiterate, this is exactly the same problem as above – again, he’s not a special envoy, so he maybe or maybe isn’t working in an official capacity based on how he’s feeling that day. Makes an awfully convenient excuse to avoid any transparency whatsoever.
I think drag dog addressed this better than I was going to, so I’ll let his words speak for me.
Yes but this particular exchange we’re having isn’t really about firing the CEO, it’s really about whether or not the CEO is authorized to go outside the organizations set up for him by the company. Congress tells the president he can have a department of state, a budget to run it, and rules for it to operate under. The president is an executive overseeing this department’s operation. Yes he is a co-equal branch, and that gives him a lot of latitude into how to run the department, but it doesn’t give him the authority to act like a king and decide to do his state department business outside of the confines that congress has given him.
That gives me hope. I have read articles here and there that the SCOTUS does not suffer from as much of an ideological divide as the media would have one believe. Bearing that in mind, there sits Roberts who is a man who never has to listen to bad lawyers arguing bad law. If you’re going to appear before the SCOTUS you’re going to bring your A game, right? Well Trump’s lackeys sure aren’t bringing theirs and he has got be getting tired of listening to them blather and lie and distract. He’s smart enough to know what they’re doing and it’s good to see that his patience has limits.
Dershowitz’s argument that a politician using the power of their office to support their reelection efforts is not impeachable is incredibly dangerous to the democratic ideals of the USA. It should outrage any American that loves their country, but it won’t, and that’s how democracy dies. When democracy itself becomes politically partisan, then it dies. Anybody thinking of voting Republican needs to seriously consider how much value they place in a democracy. Voting Republican right now is voting for allowing the incumbent considerable leeway in how they can use their office to retain power.
If Nixon had hired Dershowitz, he could have argued that breaking into the Democratic headquarters was in the national interest and therefore covering it up is unimpeachable. It was a very dangerous thing to say and I have to commend Roberts for not throwing the gavel at him.
So the night before the election Trump could order all polling places in Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and, well, any/all other Democrat-leaning districts to be shut down because terrorists, coronavirus, what ever, and because that is (a) not illegal and (b) “in the public interest”, by the Dousch-o-nitwit Doctrine it would not impeachable.
Or why not just kill Joe Biden. “He was about to do some very bad things, against our country. I can’t tell you what is was, but it was bad, believe me…Is Alan out there? Alan?..Hey, there’s Alan. Everybody say hi to Alan. Great guy. Great guy.”