We are in for a TON of legal/political dancing on Donald Trump’s impeachment….
Remember…
I see on social media some people thinking that Trump can be UN-impeached….
THAT CANNOT Happen….
Impeachment is like indictment charges from a criminal grand jury….
Donald J. Trump HAS been charged with obstruction of justice and abuse of power….
You will notice below that his defends do NOT mention the abuse of power charge which in legal terms would be extrortion….
Trump’s legal team jumps over the who legal part and goes straight political with an argument that would mean Donald Trump was right in saying NOTHING he would do could take him out office since doing so would negate the 2016 election….Which of course is wrong….
But?
The Trump trial IS about politics….
Not law…..
The ability to remove a crooked American President IS indeed difficult…
The White House defense team has until noon Monday to file its legal brief outlining why the president should be acquitted.
The House’s legal filing reiterates the findings of the House Intelligence and Judiciary panels, which, after hearing from witnesses and experts, charged Trump last month with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House impeached him on Dec. 18.
“The evidence overwhelmingly establishes that he is guilty of both,” the managers wrote in the brief. “The only remaining question is whether the members of the Senate will accept and carry out the responsibility placed on them by the Framers of our Constitution and their constitutional Oaths.”…
President Trump’s legal team on Saturday declared the impeachment articles approved by the House “constitutionally invalid” and accused House Democrats of a “brazen and unlawful attempt” to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.
The president’s team of lawyers — led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow — submitted a six-page answer to the summons notifying the president of the Senate impeachment trial Saturday evening.
The filing launches a broadside against the House impeachment process, while denying the charges against the president and casting the articles as an “affront” to the Constitution, democratic institutions and the American people. The president’s lawyers urge the Senate to reject the charges.
“The articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president,” the president’s lawyers argue in their first formal response to the Senate.
“This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election — now just months away,” they write.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz said on Sunday the argument that a president cannot be impeached for abusing his power is a “strong one” that has been successful in the past.
Dershowitz, who’s serving as legal counsel for President Trump‘s defense team in the Senate impeachment trial, told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that he is following in the footsteps of Justice Benjamin Curtis who defended President Andrew Johnson. He said Curtis had argued that proof of a crime was necessary for a president to be removed from office.
“So I am making an argument much like the argument made by the great Justice Curtis,” he said. “And to call them absurdist is to, you know, insult one of the greatest jurists in American history. The argument is a strong one. The Senate should hear it.”
He said the constitutional framers worried about “giving Congress too much power” to weaponize impeachment on a partisan basis, adding that abuse of power is too “open-ended.”
The lawyer, who voted against Trump in 2016, maintained he was consulting Trump solely on the constitutional matters involved in his case, not questions of whether additional witnesses or evidence should be allowed.
“You can’t charge a president with impeachable conduct if it doesn’t fit within the criteria for the Constitution,” Dershowitz said….
Democrats in the House and Senate have repeatedly pushed McConnell to ensure that additional witnesses can testify in the impeachment trial, which follows a House inquiry focused on allegations of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
McConnell has been against the idea, but some Republicans have expresses an openness to hearing additional witnesses at the trial.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Friday that she’d “likely vote” in favor of new evidence and witnesses, but that she first wanted to hear both sides present their case. …
image US Senate chamber…APNews