Impeachment
January 21, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The single Article of Impeachment passed by the House states, in pertinent part: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding
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January 19, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I want to distinguish between two main theories of impeaching President Trump. They are impeaching him for what he said about the election and impeaching him for what he told or encouraged people to do about the election’s outcome. The House of Representative’s article of impeachment mingles the two into a stew it hopes tastes and smells like insurrection. The potpourri is heavy on what Trump said about the election
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January 18, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In this post on impeachment, I want to state some presumptions that I think should apply in impeachment proceedings, including the latest impeachment of President Trump. First, in my view, there should be a strong presumption against impeaching a president. The decision of who should be president is for the American people to make. The Constitution permits Congress to override that decision, but Congress should be very hesitant to use
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January 17, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Nancy Pelosi undoubtedly is proud of the fact that Donald Trump is now the only U.S. president in history to have been impeached twice. However, it’s a distinction Trump is unlikely to hold for long. Impeachments are likely to become a cost of doing business for American presidents. Arguably, they already are. There have been three of them in the last four presidencies. Two of the last four presidents have
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January 14, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Mitch McConnell remains the Senate Majority Leader until the new administration takes office next week. Following the impeachment of President Trump yesterday, Senator McConnell issued the following statement regarding the Senate schedule: The House of Representatives has voted to impeach the President. The Senate process will now begin at our first regular meeting following receipt of the article from the House. Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern
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January 13, 2021 — John Hinderaker
…but perhaps the dumbest. Impeachment, that is. It is fitting, in a weird way, that the Democrats talked about impeaching President Trump before he was inaugurated, and now have actually impeached him for the second time when he is about to leave office, and the impeachment can have no practical effect. Neither in 2016 nor today did impeachment relate to anything other than the irrational, visceral hatred that Democrats have
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January 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Watching the House impeach President Trump for the second time today, a week before Trump’s scheduled departure from office, I was reminded of the title of Abbie Hoffman’s book Revolution for the Hell of It. This was Impeachment for the Hell of It. The whole impeachment thing has become a matter of political theater, about as serious as Nancy Pelosi’s shredding of the text of Trump’s State of the Union
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January 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Democrats and their media complex have sought to remove President Trump from office since the day he became president. The day before yesterday the pretext was the Russia hoax. It was a day that lasted three long years, but put that to one side. Yesterday it was the Ukraine piffle (as Michael Goodwin calls it) and impeachment, round 1. Today, as Trump’s term in office comes to a close, it
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January 11, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Ridiculous though it may be, Nancy Pelosi apparently is serious about impeaching President Trump. This will have zero practical effect, of course, since he is leaving office in a week. It is just an expression of the insane hatred that motivates so much of what the Democratic Party does. Impeachment after the fact has precedents. In medieval Europe, death did not make one safe from charges of heresy. An alleged
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January 10, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I was caught up short yesterday when I spotted, on the generally very pro-Trump American Greatness website, William B. Allen’s article entitled “Let Us Impeach Him.” It pays to read past the headline of this article, because the argument is not what you think: it’s not a “get-him-out-office-as-fast-as-we-can” manifesto. Rather, Prof. Allen argues that we should take our time and impeach Trump after he leaves office, thereby allowing scope for
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January 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Nancy Pelosi is talking about impeaching President Trump if he isn’t removed (which he won’t be). She might do it. She has the votes. However, impeaching Trump would be a meaningless gesture. There isn’t enough time before January 20 for the Senate to have a trial even if Mitch McConnell were inclined to hold one. Rich Lowry says it’s “technically possible to impeach an official after he has left office.”
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March 13, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I wrote this past December about House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff’s acquisition of telephone records used in the committee’s “impeachment inquiry report” here (part 1), here (part 2), here (part 3), and here (part 4). In those posts I tried to infer the underlying facts from the “impeachment inquiry report.” We were nevertheless left hanging. How did Schiff do that? Kim Strassel follows up this week in her Wall Street
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February 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
As Scott noted this post, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled yesterday that that Article III of the Constitution forbids federal courts from resolving the dispute between the House of Representatives and the executive branch over whether former White House Counsel Don McGahn must comply with a subpoena to testify before the House. The decision is, of course, a victory for President Trump. It means
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February 10, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Two of the key witnesses in the Trump impeachment have been removed from their positions. Gordon Sondland is out as Ambassador to the European Union. Lt. Col Alexander Vindman has been reassigned from the National Security Council to the Pentagon. Democrats are crying foul, of course. But was it improper for Trump to take these personnel actions? Sondland’s case seems easy to me. Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the
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February 6, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Andrew Bolt is a terrific Australian columnist, commentator and television host. He has a show on Sky News called the Bolt Report; I appeared on Tuesday’s show immediately after President Trump’s State of the Union speech to convey my impressions on the evening, as well as the collapse of the Democrats’ impeachment drive, to Andrew’s Australian audience. My themes will be familiar to Power Line readers, but perhaps they shed
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February 6, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
If Mitt Romney voted his conscience yesterday when he favored convicting President Trump for “abuse of power,” then I respect his vote. An impeachment trial isn’t a team sport, or shouldn’t be. But I don’t believe Romney voted his conscience. I’m not sure he has one. Who is Mitt Romney? He was a center-right governor of Massachusetts. Then, he was a hard-right candidate for the Republican nomination. He was “pro-choice”
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February 6, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times is nothing if not predictable. In the age of Trump, it has become even more so. Having pioneered the “strange new respect” profile genre — i.e., the laudatory profiles of Republicans or conservatives who “get above their raisin'” to join the sanctified line of the Democratic Party — the Times owed Romney, and the Times has now delivered. Before we get to it, however, let us
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