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| Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images |
Any effort to impeach President Donald Trump for comments made to Washington demonstrators would be flatly unconstitutional.
The Constitution permits impeachment and removal of the president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” There’s no reasonable claim that Trump’s speech, which largely focused on disputed, but credible, claims of election irregularities, was treasonous or involved a bribe. And in the absence of proof of deliberate incitement to riot, it wasn’t a “high Crime.”
So, as in the former Trump impeachment, the only potential basis for removal from office would be commission of a “high … Misdemeanor.” (We know from founding-era evidence that in the Constitution, the adjective “high” modifies “Misdemeanor” as well as “Crime.”)
The previous impeachment proceedings were marked by a debate over the meaning of the phrase “high misdemeanor.” Each of the four academic experts who testified at the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee offered their own definitions. The prosecutors and the president’s defense team offered their definitions, too. --->READ MORE HERE
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| AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta |
Less than a week has passed since the Capitol riot, and the Democratic Party, the establishment media, and Big Tech now present it as axiomatic that President Donald Trump incited the mob for the purpose of preventing the electoral vote certification and, presumably, grabbing dictatorial powers. Republican Senators Pat Toomey and Lisa Murkowski have joined the calls for Trump either to resign or face a second impeachment, and even Ted Cruz has said that Trump’s rhetoric “certainly contributed to the violence that occurred.” But before the lynch mob gets the noose ready and hangs the president from the nearest tree, it would be useful to step back and make sure that he really did what everyone seems to be sure he was guilty of doing: incite the crowd at the Capitol to violence for the purpose of staging a coup.
Trump’s speech that supposedly incited the mob is here. At the end of it, he said:
So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.
The attentive reader may have noticed that there is nothing there, or in any other part of the speech, calling upon the crowd to storm the Capitol, or to overthrow the government, or to do anything but walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and encourage lawmakers to support the president. The case for the claim that Trump incited the mob rests on the proposition that he didn’t have to spell out what he wanted them to do; when he detailed his reasons for believing that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, that was enough to inflame them sufficiently to storm the Capitol. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to related stories:
No, Trump Isn’t Guilty of Incitement
Why Impeaching Trump Would Damage the Constitution
DOJ Says It Has No Plans to Charge Trump With 'Incitement'
Blunt: Trump Impeachment ‘Clearly Is Not Going to Happen’
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