Jim Fetzer, Why the Impeachment Trial may Come to an Abrupt End
Jim Fetzer
“If we don’t impeach this guy, he will get reelected”–Rep. Al Green (D-TX)
For only the third time in American history, a President of the
United States has been impeached by the House of Representatives, in
this case, on the grounds of Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.
The first article purports to be based upon a phone call with the
President of Ukraine, where he is alleged to have withheld foreign aid
unless Ukraine were to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a
potential political rival in the 2020 Presidential Election. The second
alleges that the President has defied Congress by refusing to honor
subpoenas for witnesses and evidence in support of these allegations.
The principal problem with these charges is that they do not obviously
qualify as violations of the US Constitution, which specifies
that impeachment requires “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors”, which are not among the offense with which Donald J.
Trump has been charged.
Historical Background
The present trial
cannot be understood without appreciating the partisan character of the
proceeding. The Founding Fathers were wary that, in a divided Congress,
where the House was dominated by the members of one party but the
presidency held by a member of the other, impeachment could become a
tool of policy where, because of purely political differences, the House
would bring articles of impeachment as instruments to remove a
president whose policies they did not support rather than because of any
real crimes or misdemeanors. Indeed, this trial is fraught with
indications that this may be precisely such a case, where allegations of
collusion between the President and Russia (known as “Russiagate”) have
dominated the media for nearly three years now and where the latest
incarnation (known as “Ukrainegate”) appears to many impartial observers
to be nothing more than a thinly veiled version of Russiagate 2.0.
The Mueller
investigation, which was widely expected by Democrats to create a
powerful case for impeachment over Russiagate, fell flat, when its
ostensible author, Robert Mueller, former head of the FBI and lauded as
akin to a national hero, turned out, during his Congressional testimony,
not to know the contents of his own report and where no proof of
collusion has ever emerged either then or since. Indeed, it turned out
that the allegations of Russian collusion were introduced by Hillary
Clinton’s campaign managers, Robbie Mook and John Podesta, in an effort
to distract attention from her incompetent campaign, Podesta’s
involverment in Pizzagate (the US franchise of the world-wide phenomenon
known as Pedogate), and her own financial entanglements with Russia,
involving the sale of 20% of US uranium reserves to Russia through the
Canadian company, Uranium One, with the approval of then-Prsident Barack
Obama.
Indeed,
investigations by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice,
Michael Horowitz, have exposed the abuse of the FISA Court to obtain
warrants to conduct surveillance on parties connected to the Trump
campaign, which were justified on the basis of a dossier fabricated by
former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele, who has admitted under oath to a
British Court that he composed it as an employee of Hillary Clinton and
the Democratic National Committee. It was an indispensable element in
(what was called Operation Crossfire Hurricane, involving many
high ranking members of the federal government, including John Brennan,
James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and even Susan Rice and (ultimately) Barack
Obama. When Federal Prosecutor John Durham’s investigation becomes
public information, it may reveal the greatest political scandal in the
history of the United States–with perhaps the exception of Trump’s
impeachment.
The Impeachment
Even though House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged various committees of the House to conduct
their hearings expeditiously, emphasizing that fashioning articles of
impeachment was a matter of national security and of the greatest
urgency, once they had been drafted, she refused to send them to the
Senate for trial, attempting to manage how the Senate would conduct the
trial as the Speaker of the House. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority
Leader, however, was not disposed to play Nancy’s game, where, under
pressure from members of her own party, she reluctantly forwarded them
to the Senate on 15 January 2020, nearly a month after they had been
adopted by the House on an overwhelmingly party-line vote taken on 18
December 2019, whereupon McConnell moved forward to resolve the matters
pending for the trial by the Senate to take place, including especially
formalizing the rules under which the trial would proceed.
On Monday, 20 January 2020, the Senate Majority Leader eased up on
his plan for a tight two-day schedule to allow each side to have three
days to present its case and allowing the House evidence to be admitted
for the trial. McConnell did not change the rules for admitting
witnesses or new documents, however. During a series of votes about
specific witnesses, moreover, he prevailed–again and again–on straight
53-47 party-line votes, a powerful affirmation of the widely-held
expectation that the President was most unlikely to be removed from
office, a result that requires a 2/3 (or 67 vote) majority in the
Senate. While that has never seriously been in doubt, there were
questions about whether Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic, or Susan
Collins or Lisa Murkowski might vote in favor of witnesses. As matters
now stand, there appears to be no prospect for the introduction of new
evidence or testimony during the trial by the Senate.
The Prosecution thus has three days to present its case–Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday–while the Defense will then begin on Saturday and
continue on Monday and Tuesday, absent a motion to dismiss, which may be
expected when the Prosecution rests. Such a motion contends that, even
if everything the Prosecution has alleged were true, no impeachable
offense has been committee and therefore the charges should be
dismissed. Alan Dershowitz, the brilliant Constitutional authority, has
made that argument during interviews on cable networks, where many
believe it will carry the day. The Democrats have been hampered by
arguing, on the one hand, that the case for impeachment is overwhelming,
but also, on the other, that additional witnesses and evidence are
indispensable. They can’t have it both ways. The President’s tenure in
office seems to be secure and his trial may come to an abrupt end just a
few days hence.
James H. Fetzer, Ph,D., a former US Marine Corps officer,
is McKnight Processor Emeritus on the Duluth Campus of the University
of Minnesota and co-founder of moonrockbooks.com.
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