The Impeachment of Donald Trump

Were those two articles Impeachable Offenses?

Start by asking, what is required by the constitution for an impeachment and removal from office of a duly elected president. The answer is; treason, bribery or High Crimes and Misdemeanors. and Alan Dershowitz ‪explains what this means. It is a very high bar.

Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz speaks Jan. 27 during the
Senate impeachment trial of the president.

(Associated Press)

Alan Dershowitz's presentation was a master class in the constitution and why the 2 house articles are NOT impeachable offenses. To impeach on them makes the presidency a creature of Congress, not co-equal. This would set a terrible precedent. ‪I recommend viewing the entire presentation which is about an hour long.

As for the question of witnesses; Let's assume that they completely show that the president attempted to get Ukraine to investigate the 2016 Democratic server, Burisma and the Biden's relationship to the company and the country. It is within the President's powers to investigate corruption. It is also withing his powers to withhold foreign aid, or in this case delay, for the purposes of his investigation. We have on tape Joseph Biden bragging about forcing the removal of a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma which was employing his son Hunter. I believe that Trump did ask for an investigation. No, it was not a crime. Therefore his action were not impeachable.

As for the question of Obstruction of Congress, the only answer to that is that the House did not pursue a remedy in the courts. It is the courts to rule on differences between the legislative and executive. They injured themselves by not doing so.

From the Democrats point of view they knew that they would never get 67 senators to vote to remove a duly elected president, expecially in an election cycle. So why puruse it. The answer is simple; to damage the president and the Republican senators politically. For the Republicans to allow anymore than the minimal time to this partsan impeachment effort would have been to allow the Democrats to weaponize impeachment and have the unchallenged use of this nakedly political process. It would have been political malpractice.

For their efforts Romney has once again shown his complete lack of maturity. Collins will have lost her Republican base in Maine and not convinced any Democrats to support her as those Democrats will never forgive her for Kavanaugh. If the Republicans lose the Senate and do not win the House we will be even a more divided and fractious country. Our government will continue to be deadlocked and the threat of socialist style policies will advance a little bit closer to the core of our countries governance.