Tag Archives: The President

Get Rid of Him Now and Stop Him from Coming Back

Posted on by

Two law professors explain why it’s necessary to sideline the president, impeach him, convict him and prevent his return: 

After a mob incited by President Txxxx stormed and occupied the Capitol, American democracy needs protecting now — and not just now but in the coming weeks and years as well.

There are reports of preliminary discussions within the administration about invoking the 25th Amendment, a provision in the Constitution that provides a process to declare a sitting president no longer capable of fulfilling his duties. Another call is coming from a surprising source: The National Association of Manufacturers, not normally an organization known for this kind of political activism, said that Vice President Mike Pence “should seriously consider working with the cabinet” to invoke the amendment to remove President Txxxx and “preserve democracy.” People are invoking the 25th Amendment on the grounds that Mr. Txxxx is not fit to hold office and incited the chaos that unfolded on Capitol Hill — and may unfold again.

There are also calls from a number of Democratic representatives to impeach and remove the president . . .

The magnitude of the current crisis calls for both of these measures. The threat the president poses to our democracy is not short-lived and must be cut off urgently and decisively — before it leads to even greater degradation to American democratic processes and traditions. It will need to happen quickly, even with other demands pressing on our country’s leadership . . .

To do this, the cabinet and Congress must deploy the 25th Amendment and impeachment in sequence.

First, Vice President Pence and a majority of the cabinet should invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment in order to make a declaration that Mr. Txxxx is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” This would immediately suspend, but not remove, Mr. Txxxx from the exercise of his presidential duties and appoint Mr. Pence as acting president. The 25th Amendment would not and should not be used as a lasting solution in a case of this kind, but rather as a temporary measure to sideline a demonstrably unfit and dangerous actor who is fueling anti-democratic action.

Second, the House should quickly draw up and pass articles of impeachment. And then the Senate should hold a fair — but immediate and efficient — trial both to remove President Txxxx from office and, as important, to disqualify him from serving in public office in the future. Precedent suggests that the Senate would likely need to hold two separate votes on removal and disqualification, although the disqualification vote may require only a simple majority to be approved, as opposed to the two-thirds vote necessary for removal from office.

Disqualification is necessary given Mr. Txxxx’s anti-democratic response to the 2020 election and the continuing danger that he will pose to constitutional norms if allowed to flirt with a return to power in 2024. Indeed, the importance of disqualification in this case is such that the Congress should proceed with impeachment even if Mr. Txxxx’s term in office has already concluded.

A public vote and rapid trial in the Senate would give much-needed legitimacy to actions to remove Mr. Txxxx from office. By forcing Republicans to stand up for democracy and against the president’s actions, it would also reaffirm bipartisan support for the fundamental principles of American democracy. Further, while the 25th Amendment is intended mainly for illness or other objective incapacities, impeachment offers an appropriate moral response to the president’s conduct, including incitement to violence and attacks on basic democratic norms.

Why do this with only about two weeks left in President Txxxx’s term? Because we must defend our democracy for all Americans, now. And we must preserve our democracy for future Americans. . . . And we must reassure the world, and especially would-be authoritarian regimes, about what United States policy will be on questions of freedom and self-rule now and in the future.

The Constitution does not protect against every threat currently facing our democracy. But it contains a range of useful safeguards. And it is high time to deploy them — with urgency.

Unquote.

Unfortunately, “some [Democratic] members fear that impeachment might trigger another violent episode”. The Republicans have the Sedition Caucus; Democrats have the Fear Caucus.

One of the Men Who Brought Down Nixon Reacts to the New Tape

Posted on by

A CNN host spoke to Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate story, to get his reaction to today’s news:

CNN:  Carl, is this deja vu for you to hear this kind of audiotape of the president of the United States, the sitting president … ?

Bernstein: It’s not deja vu. This is something far worse than what occurred in Watergate. We have both a criminal president of the United States . . . and a subversive president of the United States at the same time. This one person subverting the very basis of our democracy and willing to act criminally in that subversion. But more important, what we hear on this tape — this is the ultimate smoking gun tape — it is . . . the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly and immorally try to instigate a coup in which he remains the president of the United States. 

And in any other presidency, any other presidency, this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the president of the United States, his conviction in the Senate of the United States, and, really, an immediate call by the members of Congress, including the members of his own party, that he resign immediately. That’s really what we ought to be hearing from Republicans at this moment. Mr. President, resign. Leave the White House. This is unconscionable, it is wrong and we of your party will not permit it. We’re not going to hear that. We might from a few Republicans, but that’s what’s really called for here.

And the one thing we should recall from Watergate, it is that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct.

Now There’s a Tape, Just Like Nixon’s

Posted on by

The appearance today of a recording in which the president commits criminal offenses —  assuredly not for the first time — moved Jennifer Rubin and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post to both comment. Below is a mixture of their responses (along with a few italicized comments from me):

When President Txxxx allegedly tried firing special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III, refused to respond to lawful subpoenas during the investigation into the 2016 election and committed the other acts to obstruct justice documented in the Mueller report, he arguably violated his oath, broke the law and committed impeachable conduct.

When he tried to extort [the] Ukrainian President (“I would like you to do us a favor though 
”) to create dirt to use against now President-elect Joe Biden and stonewalled Congress’s demands for evidence, he again violated his oath, engaged in impeachable conduct and broke the law.

In neither case did Republicans recognize the facts before them. In neither case did they act to remove him.

[A president who] began his presidency trying to obstruct justice [is] ending it trying to obstruct democracy, and with an alarmingly large cadre of co-conspirators.

Some of this attempted obstruction is being conducted, as is so often the case with Txxxx, in plain sight; Txxxx’s anti-democratic conduct is so flagrant and so repeated that we become inured to how abnormal and unacceptable it is. Thus he has claimed massive fraud without basis, unleashed a barrage of litigation lacking the facts and the law to back him up, and riled up his believers to subscribe to the mass delusion that the election was stolen from him.

Behind the scenes, things are even worse, with the craziest of Txxxx’s crazy advisers pushing the president to pursue unimaginable possibilities such as declaring martial law or invoking the Insurrection Act to unleash the military to quell violence that he himself has sought to stir up.

That the ten living former secretaries of defense felt compelled to come together in an op-ed decrying any use of the military in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power underscores the peril of the moment. These aren’t just Democratic appointees — they are conservatives such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and the two secretaries Txxxx ousted for being insufficiently compliant, James Mattis and Mark ­Esper.

And now . . . we have a chilling glimpse of Txxxx’s delusional private arm-twisting in his frenzy to cling to power.

The Post reports: “President Txxxx urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.” In the call, Txxxx asked Raffensperger to change the certified vote that was subject to multiple recounts: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

In fact he threatened him. The Post reports, “During their conversation, Txxxx issued a vague threat to both Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s general counsel, suggesting that if they don’t find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County have been illegally destroyed to block investigators — an allegation for which there is no evidence — they would be subject to criminal liability.” Txxxx, sounding like a mobster as he often does, said, “That’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.” Nice career, there Brad. Shame if anything happened to it.

Pressuring a campaign official to change the vote is a federal offense [it’s a Georgia offense too]: “A person . . . who in any election for Federal office 
 knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process …” is subject to imprisonment of up to five years.

Threatening Raffensperger with criminal consequences is also arguably extortion: “Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits . . . any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee . . . or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

Georgia has counted its votes three times, once by hand, but Txxxx told Raffensperger, “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” He warned that Raffensperger and his chief lawyer were running “a big risk” of criminal liability by failing to find voter fraud.

The man who sparked a special counsel investigation by urging the FBI director to “go easy” on his fired national security adviser, the man who triggered his own impeachment by soliciting a foreign leader to help him dig up dirt on Biden — this man will never learn [or change, as Rep. Adam Schiff memorably argued during the impeachment “trial” a year ago].

Really, why should he? There are never any real consequences.

Which brings us to Txxxx’s co-conspirators.

Vice President Pence . . . is constitutionally obligated to preside over [Wednesday’s] joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s electoral college victory. Pence’s chief of staff . . . issued a statement Saturday night saying that Pence “welcomes” congressional efforts “to raise objections and bring forward evidence” at the session. . . .

And the dozen or more Republican senators . . .who are turning what should be a ceremonial event into a constitutional circus. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, defending his move to object to the certification, could summon only Pennsylvania’s use of mail-in ballots when the state’s constitution “has required all votes to be cast in person, with narrowly defined exceptions.” The state legislature passed a law allowing no-excuse mail-in voting. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, without getting into the merits, threw out a challenge to the law.

“These are very serious irregularities, on a very large scale, in a presidential election,” Hawley intoned. This man calls himself a “constitutional lawyer” and a conservative? In our federal system, what happens in Pennsylvania is up to Pennsylvania. The legislature acted. The court rejected a challenge. The state certified Biden’s win. Hawley proffered not a scintilla of evidence of fraud. What is he arguing — that the votes of more than 2.5 million Pennsylvanians should now be invalidated?

Not to be outdone — or outmaneuvered in the 2024 presidential sweepstakes — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, joined by 10 colleagues, is pressing for a commission to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election results, again, with no evidence to justify such a last-minute step.

Instead, Cruz, like Hawley, uses the very voter fears that Txxxx so carefully nurtured and his allies have stoked to justify the need for extraordinary intervention. Speaking to Fox News . . . , Cruz cited “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud” — allegations that emanate from Txxxx and his allies — that he said have “produced a deep, deep distrust of our democratic process across the country.” This is the arsonist calling the fire department to put out the blaze that he kindled.

“I think we in Congress have an obligation to do something about that,” Cruz lectured. “We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the democratic system.”

Oh please. No one has done more over the past months to undermine the integrity of the democratic system than Txxxx and his enablers. And if Cruz is actually worried about the integrity of the democratic system, he [should] start with the president.

There must be a response to a president who exploits his office for the purpose of overthrowing an election. The evidence is on tape. The next attorney general should move forward, if for no other reason, to deter further attempts at such reprehensible conduct. I would suggest impeachment as well, which could include a ban on holding office in the future, but we know already Republicans will defend anything Txxxx does [even if he declares himself King Donald the First and makes Ivanka his queen].

[If you choose to endure it, the Post has the audio and a transcript.]

Old Leader, New Leader, Same Country

Posted on by

People who know the president predicted that his aberrant psychology wouldn’t allow him to acknowledge defeat — and that he would do everything possible to protect his fragile ego. If his public actions and statements weren’t enough evidence of his diseased mind at work, we now have tape of one of his private discussions.

This afternoon, The Washington Post published an extraordinary story (probably behind a paywall) describing the president’s attempt to force the state of Georgia to declare him the winner of last month’s election:

“‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Txxxx pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor”

President Txxxx urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

I saw online comments to the effect that Georgia state law makes election tampering a crime punishable by up to three years in prison and that the president is guilty of extortion as well. He probably won’t be prosecuted in Georgia after he’s forced out of office in 17 days because Georgia’s governor and attorney general are Republicans. But there is now further reason to investigate and prosecute the crimes he and his administration have committed at either the state or federal level.

The Post story has a remarkable ending:

. . . [The president] continued to make his case in repetitive fashion, until finally, after roughly an hour, [Secretary of State] Raffensperger put an end to the conversation: “Thank you, President Txxxx, for your time.”

I guess that could merely be an example of Southern hospitality, or maybe Secretary of State Raffensperger said it sarcastically, but at least once I’d like to hear somebody speak to this maniac without the deference due his office.

In this case, Raffensperger might have responded with something like “Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Mr. President, but the God’s honest truth is that you should never have been president. After they drag you out of the White House kicking and screaming a couple weeks from now, you should seek treatment for your narcissism, your delusions, your willingness to lie about everything to everybody and your profound corruption. Psychiatrists can do wonders, although sociopaths are hard to treat. In your case, it’s still worth a try. You might be able to use an insanity defense to avoid prison.”

One other thought. Various Republican politicians have promised to play the fool for the president’s rabid supporters on Wednesday. That will somewhat delay the moment when Congress declares Biden the winner of the Electoral College. I think the only thing left for the president to do at that point is to declare a national emergency, based on the premise that the election is being stolen. Fortunately, the military has sworn to defend the Constitution, not a particular president, so I think we’ll be in safe hands. After four excruciating years, we’ll have a new leader, although we’ll still be the same screwed up country.

Update from the Nut House

Posted on by

From The Washington Post:

President Txxxx has intensified efforts to overturn the election, raising a series of radical measures in recent days, including military intervention, seizing voting machines and a 13th-hour appeal to the Supreme Court.

On Sunday, Txxxx said in a radio interview that he had spoken with Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) about challenging the electoral vote count when the House and Senate convene on Jan. 6 to formally affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

“He’s so excited,” Txxxx said of Tuberville. “He said, ‘You made me the most popular politician in the United States.’ He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He’s great. Great senator”. [Note: Tuberville is not yet a senator.]

Tuberville’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Txxxx’s statement, which the president made in an interview with Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on New York’s WABC radio station.

The next day, Flynn was in the Oval Office to discuss the idea. Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, who has promoted outlandishly false claims about this year’s election, including a disproved allegation that Venezuelan communists programmed U.S. voting machines to flip votes for Biden, was also at the meeting.

Officials inside the White House said Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone pushed back “strenuously” on the idea of martial law. Two officials, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters and conversations, said that there have been no efforts inside the White House to actually deploy the military and that the idea was quickly dismissed at the meeting.

Experts also agree the president does not have the authority to order such an action.

Meadows and Cipollone did not respond to requests for comment.

Txxxx also suggested naming Powell as special counsel on voter fraud, an appointment that appeared to be a non-starter.

“The fact that she’s in there, it’s totally nuts,” a senior campaign official said, referring to Powell. A second official noted that Matt Morgan, a lawyer for the Txxxx campaign, told employees Saturday that they should preserve records related to Powell. Dominion Voting Systems has threatened to sue Powell and the Txxxx campaign for what it described as “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations.”

At the meeting, Txxxx again suggested that homeland security officials should seize state voting machines and investigate alleged fraud.

Acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf and other homeland security officials have previously told the White House they have no authority to do so unless states ask for inspections or investigations, and they have not.

DHS officials were not present for Friday’s meeting and have not had subsequent conversations with the White House. Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of homeland security, also told Giuliani in a call last week that they could not take the machines, said officials.

In recent days, Txxxx has expressed frustration that his Cabinet is not doing more to assist. At a Cabinet meeting last week at the White House, Txxxx vented about the election and made unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, officials said, but did not give Cabinet members specific orders. The president has said Wolf should have moved more quickly to fire Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after Krebs countered Txxxx’s claims of widespread election fraud.

Additionally, some of Txxxx’s advisers have convinced him that Attorney General William P. Barr has not done enough to investigate the claims of voter fraud, and the president has increasingly complained about him, they said.

On Sunday, the Txxxx campaign said it was filing another suit with the Supreme Court over Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting rules. The U.S. Supreme Court has twice declined to take up challenges to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decisions regarding the state’s voting procedures. Generally, the court does not get involved in state court decisions on state law. 

Efforts to persuade Txxxx to do a valedictory tour for some of his accomplishments [Note: Accomplishments?], or focus on the coronavirus vaccine [but not the virus], have been futile, said two advisers. Advisers say they hope Txxxx going to Mar-a-Lago this week will calm his anger about the election, but Txxxx has shown no signs of pulling back.

Public officials and military leaders have refused to be drawn into Txxxx’s post-election maneuvering. On Friday, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Gen. James C. McConville, the Army’s top officer, released a joint statement that said: “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”

Acting defense secretary Christopher Miller, who was installed after the post-election firing of Mark T. Esper, was not present at the meeting Friday night at the White House, a senior U.S. official said. Neither was Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was traveling in the Middle East last week.

In recent days, Milley has stressed that the U.S. military will follow U.S. law, without directly criticizing the president or his most partisan supporters.

“We are unique among militaries,” Milley said in a Nov. 12 speech at the new National Museum of the United States Army. “We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or a religion. We take an oath to the Constitution.”

Peter D. Feaver, a former member of George W. Bush’s presidential administration who now studies civil-military relations at Duke University, said it was “extraordinarily distressing” that Flynn, a former national security adviser, would recommend to Txxxx that he do something “manifestly illegal and manifestly unconstitutional.”

“To invoke the Insurrection Act now to prevent that from coming to full fruition, there is just not basis for it,” he said. “The professional military ethics of it are pretty clear: The military is trained to not carry out illegal orders.”

The Justice Department also has not acquiesced to Txxxx’s pressure campaign to appoint special counsel to explore his unfounded claims of fraud, though officials say privately they are worried about what might transpire in coming weeks, as the president becomes increasingly desperate. . . .

Last week, [Attorney General William] Barr submitted a resignation letter to Txxxx, revealing he would be leaving the department on Dec. 23. . . .Barr had wanted to stay on in a second term if Txxxx had won.

Starting on Wednesday, leadership of the department will fall to Jeffrey Rosen, who had been Barr’s top deputy. Rosen had been serving as a deputy transportation secretary before he was tapped to be the No. 2 Justice Department official under Barr. He had not worked at the Justice Department before, and some lawmakers questioned whether he had adequate experience for the job.

Rosen declined to answer questions in a recent interview with Reuters about whether he would name special counsels to investigate voter fraud or Hunter Biden.

Txxxx’s efforts to persuade congressional Republicans to question the legitimacy of the vote seem to be gaining traction.

Some current and incoming Republican members of the House, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Reps.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Barry Moore (Ala.), have suggested they will join Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in using an 1880s law that allows members of Congress to dispute a state’s results and make the House and Senate vote on the challenge to the electoral vote tally on Jan. 6.

The effort is certain to fail in the Democratic-led House and will meet resistance in the Senate, where several Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have dismissed the idea. Both chambers would have to vote in favor of any challenge for it to succeed.

Last week, while campaigning for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (R-Ga.) in Georgia, Tuberville suggested he would support an electoral vote challenge.

“You see what’s coming. You’ve been reading about it in the House. We’re going to have to do it in the Senate,” Tuberville said, according to a video posted online by liberal activist Lauren Windsor.

Tuberville did not say whether he would bring such a challenge himself. But in a speech to conservative activists Sunday, Gaetz said he had spoken with Tuberville and confirmed that the Alabama Republican plans to challenge the results.

“He says, ‘We are done running plays from the establishment’s losing playbook. It is time to stand and fight,’ ” Gaetz said at an event in West Palm Beach, Fla., sponsored by Turning Point USA, a conservative youth organization. “The odds may be tough, it may be 4th and long, but we’re going for it on January 6.”

Unquote.

Before being elected to the Senate by Alabama voters last month, Mr. Tuberville was a football coach for 40 years. This qualifies him to say things like “it may be 4th and long, but we’re going for it”. More on the senator-elect:

In 2014, Tuberville founded the Tommy Tuberville Foundation, which aimed to help American veterans. In 2020, the Associated Press reported that tax records showed the foundation spent only about one-third of the money it raised on charitable giving. . . .

On November 13, 2020, Tuberville wrongly stated in an interview with the Alabama Daily News that the European theater of World War II  was fought to stop socialism and that the three branches of the US federal government are the House, the Senate, and executive, garnering him considerable negative attention and criticism. He has also said that he was looking forward to raising money from his Senate office, a violation of federal law [Wikipedia].