Abuse of power and obstruction of justice? Even the Clinton impeachment articles were more specific than that. What President doesn’t abuse his power or obstruct justice? They should have waited until they had something more specific and concrete. What has Trump done that is an unprecedented offense to the republic?
Using national security funds to extort a foreign country in order to interfere with the election…
Hopefully they get specific with that in the actual text of the articles.
I doubt it. I think they’ll say “abuse of power” and when someone asks how he abused power they’ll just throw their hands up and walk out of the room.
How about a link to the actual articles? That’s something I haven’t come up with yet- I just get Al Green’s articles from this past summer.
Can’t tell yet; all we have at the moment is a headline.
Yeah, you’d think the media would consider that important. They did think it was important enough to give us the full text of what Nancy Pelosi SAID about the impeachment articles, But not give us the text of the impeachment articles themselves.
Pressured a foreign government to announce an investigation into his political rival. That’s specifically bribery for the purpose of getting a foreign power to intervene in the US election.
Important point #1: Had there actually been an investigation into Hunter Biden, it might provide a veneer of law enforcement justification. But there is and was no investigation, because Trump didn’t actually want an investigation, he wanted Ukraine’s president to make an announcement of an investigation.
Important point #2: Yes, Ukraine eventually got the aid released. On September 11th. Curiously this was 2 days after the House started investigating the aid holdup on September 9th. It got released because Trump’s “drug deal” got exposed.
I would prefer that there be an article that the President violated 18 USC 201, in addition to the others.
That sure sounds like an impeachable offense to me, but it also sounds like a specific violation of a couple of federal laws. I would hope they’d cite those specific violations in the articles. I’m not cool with a purely political impeachment based on their perception of what he did being wrong, rather than technically illegal.
I suspect that they wanted to do exactly that, but when the Ukraine bribery scandal hit, there was too much public pressure for them to ignore such an obvious crime.
Keep in mind that SCOTUS decisions are still in the pipeline for the Mazars subpoena (which gives Congress Trump’s taxes), and DeutscheBank (which gives Congress info on Trump’s Russian loans). That could get decided as early as this Friday Dec 13th, though it could run a couple more months.
Over the coming days, watch Republicans start emphasizing that Democrats are moving way too slow, and need to get this done ASAP. Watch the Dems pretend to agree and pretend to comply, while they keep delaying in hopes of getting those sweet sweet financial docs, which will be a total game-changer.
If they don’t get those docs soon enough, nothing prevents Dems from drafting more impeachment articles when they eventually do get them. Of course it’s political and public opinion, as it always is, but if we’re talking about money laundering, fraud, and worse, the public could be persuaded.
I don’t think the “Media” has any text to release yet, do they? They just reported on the announcement of the articles, which is all that’s happened so far. I’m sure it’ll be released some time today.
Man, we’re an impatient lot.
This is just a shell game though. If Dems name a statute, Repubs will just say this is a back-door way of criminally prosecuting the President, which is illegal. The framers provided a remedy for these shenanigans, which is to give Congress broad authority to define “high crimes and misdemeanors”. This is what the American people voted for in 2018.
Oh I know Republicans will argue either way. If they cite something specific, it’s a prosecution. If they are general, they say it’s purely political.
Here’s what I really think is going on though: citing a specific statute means Republicans can mount a specific defense, and there probably isn’t enough evidence on any of his crimes to gain a conviction in a court of law. For all that the Clinton impeachment was politically motivated, they had him cold on perjury and suborning perjury.
The press can’t release the text because the House hasn’t yet released it. Don’t let that minor detail stop you from having a merry swipe at the press, though.
I think there probably is plenty of evidence of his crimes, but the President can’t be prosecuted, so Republicans get the advantage of the delays provided by the criminal process, without any actual criminal exposure. Win/win for Republicans. More shenanigans.
Criminal and civil proceedings are rigorous and allow broad benefit of the doubt, because the outcome is possibly deprivation of life, liberty, and property.
Impeachment isn’t like that. The worst that can happen is that you don’t get to be president anymore. OTOH a bad president can do serious damage to the country and the millions of people in it. That’s why it’s appropriate for impeachment not to be anything like a criminal proceeding.
Gotta start the hand-waving early.
Can you name a previous President who asked a foreign government for help in targeting a political rival?
I don’t think any Democrats are going to be reluctant to talk about this issue.
This may be a bit of a hijack, but I’ve wondered why they haven’t charged certain individuals with Hatch Act violations. While it’s legal for the President and Vice-President to campaign for re-election during the course of their official duties, it’s not legal for his staff, aides and (I think) cabinet members to do so as part of their official taxpayer funded duties.
And this used to be taken very seriously. Kathleen Sebelius, while defending the ACA, once made a statement encouraging of Obama’s re-election. And she got into trouble for doing so. And to avoid being charged, she reimbursed the taxpayers for the entire cost of her attendance at the event, which was reclassified as a political event. Even then, some Republicans complained that she got off too easy. Those were the days.