Tag Archives: The President

A Republican Explains Her Vote to the People Back Home

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Jaime Herrera Beutler is one of the ten Republicans in the House of Representatives with enough integrity, courage or patriotism (or disgust) to vote to impeach the president. Some of her constituents weren’t too clear on why she voted that way, so she offered a brief summary of the case against him on Twitter:

In conversations w/residents about this week’s impeachment vote, some are unclear on what transpired before & during that involved President Txxxx.

Here are the indisputable and publicly available facts

The president helped organize the January 6 rally. Example: 

Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump https://t.co/D8KrMHnFdK. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2020

For months, he insisted the election had been stolen and consistently urged people to “fight” in order to change the results: “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” (Tweet, Dec. 12)

“@ senatemajldr and Republican Senators have to get tougher, or you won’t have a Republican Party anymore. We won the Presidential Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT. Don’t let them take it away!” (Dec. 18)

“The ‘Justice’ Department& the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in DC on January 6th”(Dec. 26)

He led Americans to believe that Mike Pence could overturn the Electoral College results, even though the VP does not have that power. On Jan. 5 he tweeted, “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.”

He told supporters at Georgia rally that day, “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you. I hope that our great Vice President, our great Vice President, comes through for us. He’s a great guy. Of course if he doesn’t come through I won’t like him quite as much.”

During the president’s rally on January 6, he repeated phrases like “fight like hell,” and “we’re going to have to fight much harder.”

Many coming to the rally did intend to fight, with physical violence. Leading up to the rally, specific threats were numerous. Hundreds of TikTok videos promoted violence. Thousands of used hashtags promoting a second civil war.

One said, “Take your motherf—ing guns. That’s the whole point of going.” Another online comment said: “travel in packs and do not let them disarm someone without stacking bodies.”

Rather than take any action to curb the threats, the president at his rally said, “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you are allowed to go by very different rules.” He said “You’ll never take our country back with weakness.”

While the riot was in full swing & a mob was in the Capitol hunting Mike Pence, the president tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, …. not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.”

The mob at the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”

Trump supporters threaten to hang Mike Pence at Capitol – YouTube

This one of the mob attacking a Capitol Police officer. As we know, many were beaten and one died because of his injuries.

Mob beating Capitol Police officer – YouTube

The commander in chief’s primary job is to protect U.S. citizens. While this mob hunted for Pence, who had fled to a secure location, the only action we know the president took was calling GOP Senators, seeking their support to delay the Electoral College certification.

Hours after the Capitol was breached, the president released a pathetic video denouncing the violence but telling the perpetrators “I love you,” and “you are special.”

Unquote.

Those are some of the indisputable, publicly available facts. One I hadn’t heard before is how the president exploded the prices at his Washington hotel for inauguration week. This report was published by the Independent on January 1st:

The rooms initially opened at higher prices than usual, ranging from doubles for $886 to suites at $2,225. 

However, the prices seem to have been hiked further, as the hotel’s website now says a two-night minimum is required for guests visiting during the week of inauguration, with even the cheapest rooms priced at $2,225 a night for 19 and 20 January.

Make a buck. Make a coup. It’s all the same to him.

Yeah, the Senate Can and Should Convict Him After He’s Gone

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There’s a bit of a disagreement about whether the Senate can vote to convict our impeached president after he toddles off on January 20th. The legal experts who say the Senate can do it and should do it have by far the best argument.

Yesterday, Prof. Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law explained why the Senate can act.

Prof. Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas law school explains it below:

Yesterday’s vote by the House of Representatives to impeach President Txxxx (again) came notwithstanding objections from Republicans that such a move is unnecessary. Because Mr. Txxxx’s term ends at noon on Jan. 20, the argument goes, there is little point in expending energy to reinforce what is already, despite Mr. Txxxx’s best efforts, a legal inevitability.

But some commentators have gone further — arguing not only that Congress should not impeach and remove Mr. Txxxx but also that come Jan. 20, it cannot do so, because the Constitution doesn’t allow for the impeachment and removal of “former” officers. This argument is wrong as a matter of text, structure, historical practice and common sense. And Mr. Txxxx is the poster child for why, even after he leaves office, such accountability is not just constitutionally permissible but necessary.

With the Senate not expected to reconvene until next Tuesday, Mr. Txxxx’s impeachment trial could not begin until Wednesday afternoon at the earliest — after the inauguration of his successor. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides that the “President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” If that were all that the Constitution said about impeachment, there might be something to the argument that once the individual no longer holds the office, the impeachment power becomes defunct.

But Article I, Section 3 says more. In describing the powers of the Senate to conduct an impeachment trial, it provides that “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States” (emphasis added).

That latter clause is the key, because it drives home that the Senate has two decisions to make in impeachment cases: First, it must decide whether an officer should be removed. Then it must decide whether this person should be disqualified from holding any future federal office. Indeed, of the eight officers the Senate has ever voted to remove, it subsequently voted to disqualify only three of them — reinforcing that removal and disqualification are separate inquiries. And as this procedure and historical practice make clear, by the time the Senate votes on disqualification, the officer has already been removed. In other words, disqualification, at least, is itself necessarily a vote about a former (as opposed to current) officer.

More than that, the disqualification power is both the primary evidence of and the central reason the Constitution allows for the impeachment of former officers. Were it otherwise, an officer facing impeachment, or an officer who has already been impeached and is about to be removed, could also avoid disqualification simply by resigning. In 1876, disgraced Secretary of War William Belknap tried exactly that — resigning minutes before the House vote on his impeachment. The House impeached him anyway, concluding that his resignation did not defeat Congress’s impeachment power. And although some senators ultimately voted to acquit Belknap (who narrowly escaped a guilty verdict) because he was no longer in office, the Senate as a body first concluded that it had the power to try former officers, adopting a resolution that Belknap could be tried “for acts done as Secretary of War, notwithstanding his resignation of said office” before he was impeached.

The Belknap case cemented two precedents: Congress can impeach and remove former officers, but the fact that the defendant is no longer in office is one factor that senators may take into account in deciding whether to vote to convict. So, when President Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974 in an effort to forestall his seemingly inevitable impeachment and removal, that act did not deprive Congress of the constitutional power to still impeach, remove and disqualify him; it merely mitigated the perceived political expediency of doing so. By resigning, Mr. Nixon took at least some responsibility for his conduct. And the circumstances of his resignation left no reason to believe that he would ever again be a candidate for federal office.

But there is no indication that Mr. Txxxx plans to resign. His term ends next Wednesday only because Section 1 of the 20th Amendment says so. He is not going willingly. And he has made no secret of his interest in running for president again in 2024. What’s more, under the Former Presidents Act of 1958, he stands to receive significant financial and other tangible benefits, including a handsome annual stipend, funds for offices and a staff, and a pension. But that same statute denies such benefits to a former president who was removed “pursuant to Section 4 of Article II of the Constitution.” So whether Mr. Txxxx is impeached, convicted and disqualified determines not only whether he could ever again hold federal office but may also bear upon the extent to which federal taxpayers will be subsidizing his activities in the years to come.

The conservative argument would say that the Constitution leaves Congress powerless to deal with such a case — or with any scenario in which a president commits grossly impeachable acts in his final days in office. Not so. Whether he should be convicted and disqualified remains, under the Constitution, in the sole purview of the Senate.

And whereas the conservative argument against a post-Jan. 20 impeachment presupposes that the matter will inevitably end up in the courts (which may be sympathetic to Mr. Txxxx), that claim, too, is erroneous. In 1993, the Supreme Court held that it’s not for the courts to review the propriety of impeachments. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote, neither any extrinsic evidence from the Constitutional Convention nor contemporaneous commentary suggested that the founders even contemplated “the possibility of judicial review in the context of the impeachment powers.” It’s ultimately Congress’s call — for former officers as much as current ones.

Unquote.

If the authors of the Constitution had been a bit more careful, they would have written “removal or disqualification”, not “removal and”. Damn founding fathers! That blemish seems to be the only reason to say the Senate can’t act after the 20th. As the professors explain, it’s not a good reason and not how impeachment has worked in the past.

I don’t know if there are 17 Republican senators who will agree to convict DJT (that plus the 50 Democrats will be enough). There are excellent reasons to do so. For one thing, he deserves to be convicted. Another reason is it will permit the Republicans to free themselves from the threat that he will run again in 2024 (actually, it will stop him running again and seeking campaign contributions as of January 20th, which he will no doubt do if given the chance). Any Republican senator who wants to run for president has a motive to remove competition.

A third reason is that we shouldn’t have to subsidize this guy’s gilded lifestyle after he leaves office. He’s supposed to be a billionaire. Let him uses his own resources, assuming he stays out of prison. In particular, he can afford to hire his own security detail, especially now that it’s been revealed that Ivanka and Jared wouldn’t let the Secret Service use the bathrooms in their D.C. mansion.

PS: I don’t know if it’s true, but former presidents are supposedly eligible for top secret briefings from the government. We shouldn’t trust one more secret to the Lord of the Lies and his extremely big mouth.

Materials In Support of Impeaching Donald John Trump For High Crimes and Misdemeanors

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This is the introduction to the document issued today by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee in support of impeaching the president:

The Constitution grants the House of Representatives the “sole Power of Impeachment,” not merely as a safeguard for the nation between elections, but also in cases where the removal of the President is urgent and necessary to preserve the security of the constitutional order. The House must invoke this power now to impeach President Txxxx for inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021. President Txxxx engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors when he urged his supporters to storm the United States Capitol Building and then failed to stop the ensuing violence. His actions marked the culmination of an extensive and unprecedented effort to overturn the results of the presidential election.

As alleged in the Article of Impeachment and described in this report, President Txxxx has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. His continued hold on the Office of the Presidency, even for only a few more days, represents a clear and present danger to the United States.

President Txxxx has engaged in a prolonged effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and maintain his grip on power. He has spent months spreading disinformation about the results—falsely claiming that he “won by a landslide,” that the election was being “stolen,” and that the reported results are somehow fraudulent. He has stated that it would be illegitimate to accept the results of the election as certified by state officials and upheld by state and federal courts, and he has implied that accepting those results would pose an existential threat to the country, its democracy, and the freedoms of his political supporters. He has directly threatened government officials to “find” lost votes or face criminal penalties, encouraged his own Vice President to unlawfully overturn the election results and, ultimately, incited his supporters to take violent action and prevent the counting of the election results.

President Txxxx invited his political supporters to Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, the day fixed by law for the counting of electoral votes. The crowd that gathered in the Ellipse that morning was large, angry, and widely reported to be preparing for violent action. At that rally, the President delivered an incendiary speech to his supporters. Among other statements, President Txxxx reiterated false claims that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.” He stated that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” And then he exhorted his supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” to prevent the Congress from confirming the election of “an illegitimate President.”

These comments directly incited a violent attack on the Capitol that threatened the safety and lives of the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and the President pro tempore of the Senate, the first three individuals in the line of succession to the presidency. The rioters attacked law enforcement officers, unleashed chaos and terror among Members and staffers and their families, occupied the Senate Chamber and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, ransacked other offices, vandalized government property, and succeeded in interfering with Congress’s performance of its constitutional duty to count the electoral votes. Five people were killed, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, and more than fifty police officers were seriously injured.

It is indisputable that the President encouraged—and that his actions foreseeably resulted in—the terrorist attack that occurred. This alone would constitute grounds for impeachment. There is no place in our government for any officer, much less a President, who incites armed insurrection to overturn the results of our democratic elections. Even after it became clear that a mob of his supporters had breached the Capitol perimeter and was violently attacking those inside, President Txxxx failed to take steps to stop the insurrection. While violent insurrectionists occupied parts of the Capitol, President Txxxx ignored or rejected repeated real-time entreaties from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to appeal to his followers to exit the Capitol. Instead, he continued to encourage his supporters and excoriated the Vice President for not “hav[ing] the courage to do what should have been done.” He called at least one Republican Senator, not to check on his safety, but to ask for additional delay to the certification of the election when the Congress reconvened.

When he finally issued a public statement addressing the violence hours after it began, President Txxxx persisted in falsely asserting that “we had an election that was stolen from us,” and he told the rioters, “[w]e love you, you’re very special.” And at the end of the day—when the extent of the insurrection and the damage to our nation was clear—he declared that “[t]hese are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.” President Txxxx concluded: “Remember this day forever!” Most recently, the President publicly denied responsibility for the attack, claiming his words were “totally appropriate.”

The threat that manifested in the Capitol on January 6, 2021 is ongoing. The emergency is still with us. Reports suggest that the President’s supporters are threatening additional violence in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals across the nation. The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits an officer of the United States who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from “hold[ing] any office . . . under the United States.” Yet, despite widespread and bipartisan calls for his immediate resignation, the President has refused to leave office. The Vice President has thus far failed to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment to remove the President from office. The House has taken every step short of impeachment to contain the danger. Now it is time to consider this last, grave, necessary step.

Impeachment is not a punishment of prior wrongs, but a protection against future evils. It is true that the President’s remaining term is limited—but a President capable of fomenting a violent insurrection in the Capitol is capable of greater dangers still. He must be removed from office as swiftly as the Constitution allows. He must also be disqualified to prevent the recurrence of the extraordinary threat he presents. For these reasons, the House must impeach President Donald J. Trump.

Deadly Serious Nonsense

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Two days later, more stories are coming out about the terror his supporters inflicted on Washington, D.C. Reporters and photographers, doing their job, documenting the scene, were particular targets. A few of the criminals who had such a gleeful time this week are finally, slowly, being arrested. A Capitol police officer has died of his wounds, while three of his bosses have resigned in disgrace.

Dan Zak of The Washington Post writes about that day:

On Wednesday, during its season finale, the Dxxxx Txxxx Show finally leaped off the screen and into the laps of the people in power. The finale started with Republicans in Congress debasing themselves to soothe the wounded ego of the main character, the man who is vandalizing their party and their legacies, the man whose family is prolonging a grift disguised as a chintzy brand of fascism that many people are taking very, very seriously — so seriously, in fact, that an army of delusional insurrectionists sacked the U.S. Capitol as legislators were engaging peacefully, if disagreeably, in the transfer of presidential power.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” said outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) around 1:30 p.m., finally breaking with President Txxxx and his remaining enablers, who were objecting to counting the electoral votes from several states. Within an hour, the presiding officer’s chair in McConnell’s beloved institution was occupied by a bare-chested, face-painted hooligan who wore horns and animal pelts and believes that Txxxx is a god-king sent to vanquish phantom traitors and baby eaters.

It was a day of profound national humiliation, and it had been coming for a while.

A plurality of Americans voted against Txxxx in 2016. A majority voted against him in November. His incendiary behavior was tolerated, excused, ignored; there was his feeble response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, the programmatic hatred of his countless rallies, the storming of the Michigan Capitol last year after his indirect encouragement. And now his extremist followers were allowed to lay siege to a building that hadn’t been molested since 1814, when the British burned the Capitol in the name of their own god-king.

Some people who could have spoken up long ago finally found their voice.

“Today’s tyranny, an effort to subjugate America’s democracy by mob rule, was fomented and directed by Mr. Txxxx,” said Jim Mattis, Txxxx’s first secretary of defense. “His effort to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”

Mattis predicted that Txxxx will be “a man without a country.”

He will not, however, be a man without a following. The violent insurrectionists, bedecked in the name Txxxx, scaled and smashed their way into the Capitol, stalked and chased police officers up marble staircases, looted and ransacked members’ offices, ascended the dais in both the House and Senate for the perverse photo op. Members of Congress were hurried to undisclosed locations as staffers ducked in the galleries and prayed. . . .

It was all nonsense, and it was deadly serious. It was a furious pageant in which people were injured and killed. It was Washington turned into the Roman Empire by way of Atlantic City: corrupted, bankrupted, prostituted by Txxxx for a self-mythologizing spectacle and a quick buck. . . .

TV anchors, agog, kept saying they could not have imagined this. Politicians, bunkered, released statements of shock and outrage. They had not been paying attention. For some people — immigrants, Americans of color — the Dxxxx Txxxx Show was never just a show.

For the privileged, the past four years have seemed like shock-jock entertainment. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it was unbelievable. For the party in power it was an opportunity to laugh, to fret casually, to fundraise, to confirm some judges, to fast-track a career as a toadie or a righteous scold. Now, as the Capitol’s security gave way, the bitter reality of America’s civic tragedy finally materialized in the “citadel” of democracy, as Biden referred to it in a brief, somber statement.

Long after things got ugly, Txxxx released some tweets, as well as a video from the Rose Garden, addressing the monster he had brought to life.

“We love you,” he told the violent insurrectionists.

“You’re very special,” he told the violent insurrectionists.

“Remember this day forever!” he told the violent insurrectionists. . . .

Txxxx’s incitements had been heard loud and clear elsewhere, too. In Olympia, Wash., a mob stormed the gates of the governor’s mansion. In Atlanta, Georgia’s secretary of state was evacuated from his office. In Denver, the mayor ordered city buildings closed. Outside the U.S. Capitol the insurrectionists waved JESUS flags, erected an executioners stand with a noose, carried a sign that said “PELOSI IS SATAN,” wore clothing that invoked Nazism. . . 

Many of the insurrectionists were young men spoiling for a fight, adrenalized by chaos. During the campaign, Trump had told people like them to “stand back and stand by,” and then, after he lost the election, urged them to come to Washington on the day Congress was slated to make that loss unsalvageable. On Wednesday, with his family, he lit their fuse and retired to the West Wing to watch the explosion on television. . . .

As night fell, and the Capitol was retaken, . . . the insurrectionists moved westward and were allowed to violate a 6 p.m. city curfew, in stark contrast to the Black Lives Matter protesters who were assaulted by law enforcement here over the summer. Under the supervision of SWAT teams, the House and Senate reconvened to carry on their disrupted formality. . . .

Senators made sanctimonious speeches about rules, about comity, about how “this is not who we are,” as if what had just happened had not happened at all. . . .

The Trump Show resumed, with supporting characters auditioning for the lead role. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) doubled down on his objection to counting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. (Back in his home state, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board had already written that he had “blood on his hands.”) . . . 

Just past 3:30 a.m., Congress finished its work. “The report we make is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be president and vice president,” announced Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Now there was a standing ovation in the House chamber. Pence responded that this was a “sufficient declaration.” He then handed things off to the chaplain for a prayer.

“We deplore the desecration of the United States Capitol building, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life and the quagmire of dysfunction that threaten our democracy,” prayed the Senate chaplain, Barry Black. “These tragedies have reminded us that words matter and that the power of life and death is in the tongue.”

Why Try to Get Rid of Him Now?

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He is scheduled to be removed from office 13 days from now. Any attempt to strip him of his powers would require a number of Republican officeholders to agree. Given the nature of almost all Republican officeholders, it’s unlikely they would cooperate. But there are reasons to make the effort anyway.

First, it’s the right thing to do. Heinous actions should have consequences, either as retribution or as a way to limit future bad behavior.

Second, it reminds everyone that the federal government has procedures in place to deal with presidents who are unfit. Following those procedures when appropriate emphasizes their reality. It gives them weight.

Third, a failed attempt would show the public which Republican officeholders refused to do the right thing. Most of us already know who is likely to resist removing this particular unfit president, but it’s worth making their refusal public knowledge, making it clear to even more of us that they shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt or entrusted with responsibility in the future.

Finally, it’s possible that the attempt to punish this president would succeed. Since the president incited a riot that endangered Vice President Pence and members of his family, in addition to all the other people who were put at risk, and furthermore called Pence disloyal and weak when he failed to engineer a coup, the vice president might conceivably get a majority of the president’s cabinet members to approve the use of the 25th Amendment, making Pence the acting president until January 20th. If Democrats in the House of Representatives impeach the president again, as they seem likely to, roughly 17 of the 50 or so Republican senators, including Majority Leader McConnell, might conceivably agree to convict him and bar him from ever being president again.

This is why it’s encouraging that leading Democrats. a few Republicans and other observers have called for action against this incredibly unfit president, unlikely as it may be.