To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment
The history and future of our democracy’s ultimate sanction, presidential impeachment, and a guide to how it should be used now
To End a Presidency addresses one of today’s most urgent questions: when and whether to impeach a president. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz provide an authoritative guide to impeachment’s past and a bold argument about its proper role today. In an era of expansive presidential power and intense partisanship, we must rethink impeachment for the twenty-first century.
Of impeachments, one Constitutional Convention delegate declared, “A good magistrate will not fear them. A bad one will be kept in fear of them.” To End a Presidency is an essential book for all Americans seeking to understand how this crucial but fearsome power should be exercised.
Just sayin’
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Break that glass now!
Going by the very early morning tweet-rants coming from the nutcase in the Oval Office, the commencement of the Manafort trail has induced an especially-severe loss of composure. And when Trump loses his composure, both he and his allies make mistakes.
And people who make mistakes are caught. Trump is really starting to look vulnerable, and for the first time since his election there appear to be real cracks showing. I can finally see that he might in fact be dislodged from the presidency.
The problem is that most of his base are so rusted on that they’d support him even if he told them they’d have to take a slurp of the special drink that would transport them to the mother ship. I’m not sure that millions of ignorant and even crazy right-wing fundamentalists feeling aggrieved about the reality of legitimate justice is a recipe for a peaceful transition to a post-Ttrump time.
There may be a lot of difficult times ahead for the USA.
Impeachment is going to be very very tough.
You would need to flip both the House and Senate.
It would be fairly easy to impeach in the House, because you just need a simple majority.
However, to convict in the Senate you need 2/3 (a supermajority) to vote in favor of conviction.
Very very tough.
Plus, what has the President done which rises to the level of impeachment?
Can you be impeached for actions taken prior to taking office?
These are very tough questions.
I guess I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Violated the emoluments clause in the Constitution of the United States.
Nah, it wouldn’t take so much to impeach Trump. Most of the Republican Senators would prefer to remove Trump from office. They just aren’t sure how to do it while getting re-elected.
If Trump doubles down after his early-morning Twitter-rant today, he might end up trying to fire one or both of Rosenstein and Mueller. If he does this he’s shouting out his obstruction of justice, and Republican senators will really need to think about whether they want another term or to salvage the vestiges of US democracy.
Any confidence that the GOP will not impeach Trump is simply a reflection of the fact that Republicans think that democracy and justice don’t apply to them. Go down that road, and there be dragons…
“I guess I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
nor their panty hoses.
Impeachment would cause civil war. Leftists don’t have a chance. LOL
Really? I thought the shit bag Trump lovers loved the constitution and various systems of law?
If those systems concur someone might have done something wrong, it’s undermining faith in those systems if someone’s gonna get violent over it.
This is the response that Trump as deliberately fomented in his base. Today he attempted to obstruct justice with unveiled directive to the attorney general, and the Republican party of the USA didn’t blink.
The US empire stumbled today, and the world is watching to see if it steadies itself or falls over completely.
I highly recommend that anyone remotely interested in the obstruction of justice that Trump committed today watch and carefully consider tonight’s broadcast of Lawrence O’Donnell’s ‘The Last Word’.
Many salient points are made, and US Americans should ponder on where their country is headed.
Always knew tea-baggers and modern right-wing members were only skin-deep in love of their country, but would be willing to turn traitor in the blink of an eye.
Thanks for showing your turn-coat interior.
Tea-baggers like billyR have never read the Constitution — they simply love what they believe it says.
Trump’s latest volley of tweets attacking the Mueller investigation and Jeff Sessions is in a style that is not typically his. Rudy Giuliani made comments afterward that appear to indicate that these tweets were composed with the knowledge of Trump’s lawyers, which opens not just Trump but his legal team to charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and contaminate juries.
This type of behaviour would in the past have had hundreds of thousands of people from both sides of politics choking the streets in mass protest of executive abuse of power. Now, though, it seems that the Republicans have completed left behind any vestige of pretense in interest in due process, justice, and fairness for all.
Putin will be effervescing with unbridled and incredulous glee that his stooge has so effectively destroyed the US American ideal.
Jill Wine-Banks’ conversation with Lawrence O’Donnell is eye-opening, and just minutes after I posted it above she made the same observation about jury tampering:
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/is-trump-guilty-of-jury-tampering-in-manafort-trial-1290430019883
” Ideal ”
What’s that then?
Context would suggest you mean ” due process, justice, and fairness for all”,
but seeing as that’s never existed ( choose a period of time deniers, when it has. Go on! ) and so can’t be destroyed, I’m not sure what this ideal is.
There was an implied “mythic” as an adjective…
Ok. Gotcha now. I missed that implication completely. Thanks.
“Jill Wine-Banks’ conversation with Lawrence O’Donnell is eye-opening, and just minutes after I posted it above she made the same observation about jury tampering:”
Both individuals are devoted readers of the Harry Potter series and
fiction.
Jill Wine-Banks was a Watergate prosecutor. I’ll put her authority far, far above your blather any day.
Got news for you BillyR, Harry Potter is fiction.
However there may be a similarity to the Trump way of doing things, the ‘Ministry of Magic’ is certainly pulling strings and Rita ‘Huckabee Sanders’ Skeeter sure reports in magically twisted ways but who is Voldemort working in the background. Ultimately of course it could be Putin but lower down in the food chain but way above Trump there is another, my money is on Pence (‘scuse pun).
Gee, thanks LA, I though Harry Potter was a global
AGW activist.
Boy, am I really a rube!! Please don’t tell K9 dean, as
he will belittle me and I’m only 5′ 2″.
How many centimeters is that for you, in the metric world..?
What do you think the G stands for???
Which Eastern European country are you from, Billy?
English is not BillyR’s first language, is it? Is suspect that it’s not even his second – gibberish would appear to take that honour…
I won’t spoil it for you, the conversion is straightforward, I’ll let you answer your own question.
Now can you convert your height into Spanish cubits?
“English is not BillyR’s first language”
Honesty, integrity, decency, and understanding (of anything) are not in his makeup.
“Now can you convert your height into Spanish cubits?”
You mean enter a bull ring.?
liberal, who must be anything but, wrote:
That sign of a vacuous brain – that LOL sign off.
Whatever, civil war could be just around the corner as police side with far-right activists and attack moderate protesters., demonstrating that a fascist state exists in parts.
Portland far-right rally: police charge counterprotesters with batons drawn
Trumpistas should consider the tool of the would be dictator – divide and rule.
Unless this gets sorted the US dream is finished.
Uh Oh, got a new tile for Lionel A, the previous anonymous.
Only the sickos at the Guardian would call
a prayer group – right winged.
Hans puts his feet in it:
Really?
Source
Well done, up-voting your own post, I just tried it on both of mine above to see if that would work. It does. That is the only time I do that – to test.
I thought the resident and visiting arseholes were onanising their own posts. Sad!
I too noticed the flurry of self-approval after the troll postings. I accidentally ticked one myself trying to give Lionel a vote, so I apologise to the thread for that…
Looks like Australia too has a problem with far-right apologists for Hitler and Sky giving them a platform.
With a risk of giving these cretins more oxygen:
Outcry over Sky News Australia interview with far-right extremist
Another, to coin a phrase, piece of work:
A future Trumpist PM for Australia perhaps, should fit well with Gina Rinehart who’s company has given millions to a climate septic thinktank:
Gina Rinehart company revealed as $4.5m donor to climate sceptic thinktank. Rinehart doing her best to cook the world.
Climate septic
I used to use that term but haven’t for a long time. Still think it’s wonderfully descriptive.
“This is the most one sided Witch Hunt in the history of our country. Fortunately, the facts are all coming out, and fast!”
Thank you Mr.President!
“People close to the president believe that he may be increasing his legal jeopardy by continuing to speak publicly about sensitive matters even as his campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia and he himself is under scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/us/politics/trump-tower-meeting-donald-jr.html
Trump is so ignorant, unskilled, and undisciplined, and so unprepared for the scrutiny that a president would be subjected to, that he’s become a constantly flowing source of evidence for obstruction of justice against himself. Not only is this wholesome prime-time entertainment, but it also could be ground for impeachment.
We’ve been assured that collusion isn’t a crime. Well, asphyxiation may not be a crime, but murder is, and there does seem to be mounting evidence that Trump and some of his associates conspired with a foreign country in ways that, if proven, could be called treasonable. To me, that sounds like an impeachable offense. And it sounds like an offense of such magnitude that Senate Republicans would risk their careers and reputations by excusing it.
It’s safe to assume that Mueller and his staff know more than we do, and maybe even that there are irregularities being investigated that we don’t yet know about. Another risk is a Democratic majority in one or both chambers of Congress, which would open the door to investigations and subpoenas, and perhaps the release of Trump’s tax returns and information about his financial ties to Russia. I don’t think it’s wishful thinking to say that Trump is in trouble.
“We can all move forward understanding that there is a clear fact pattern about which there is no dispute:
The President’s son and top advisers knowingly met with individuals connected to the Russian government, hoping to obtain dirt on their political opponent.
Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Clinton campaign were later used in an overt effort to sway the election.
When the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered, the President instructed his son and staff to lie about the meeting, and told them precisely which lies to use.
The President is attempting to end the investigation into this meeting and other instances of attempted collusion between his campaign staff and representatives of the Russian government.”
[In addition Trump himself urged Russia to release additional Hillary Clinton emails.]
https://www.newyorker.com/news-desk/swamp-chronicles/the-day-trump-told-us-there-was-attempted-collusion-with-russia
If collusion is not a crime Trump has nothing to worry about. That fact that he does worry reflects the other fact that colluders aren’t charged with collusion, they’re charged with conspiracy.
And there’s a mountain of hard evidence implicating Trump and his election campaign in multiple acts of conspiracy – including his own admission yesterday to the very act of conspiracy by his campaign. Don Jnr must be smarting about that particular FUBAR: I hope that Kimberly Guilfoyle is ready to share Jnr with Bubba and a few other long-term inmates of the US penitentiary system…
The question is whether Trump or a future President Pence will attempt to pervert justice by pardoning…
“If collusion is not a crime Trump has nothing to worry about.”
But it is. It’s a non-legal way of saying conspiracy.
“To say there’s no crime of collusion means nothing,” said Rocah. “That label isn’t in the criminal statutes. But that doesn’t matter because the conduct that underlies collusion can be, under certain circumstances, conspiracy to defraud the U.S.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-31/forget-collusion-conspiracy-s-the-watchword-in-mueller-filings
“Like some legal zombie that can’t be killed, the argument that “collusion is not a crime” is back and walks among us. And it’s still nonsense…
It’s true there is no crime called “collusion.” It’s also irrelevant. What matters in criminal law is the facts, not the precise terms used to describe what happened…
Collusion is generally defined as a secret agreement to work together towards some illicit end. As I pointed out more than a year ago when this argument first surfaced, in criminal law this describes a potential conspiracy.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/collusion-is-not-a-crime-not-so-fast/2018/07/31/fc8d20ba-94f3-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html?utm_term=.3f3643f07ccf
And even if collusion wasn’t a crime, Trump would be in plenty of trouble. Trump himself has created his obstruction of justice problem. The FBI may be in possession of a good bit of incriminating evidence via Michael Cohen, and Cohen is more eager to save himself than to save Trump. There are the women, the groping (Zervos), and the coverup payments, which also could be illegal campaign contributions. There are the interminable problems that would arise from a Democratic midterm victory. Then there’s Trump, whose tweets repeatedly have supported the charges against him. Finally there’s Rudy Guliani who seems intent on contradicting Trump and making a fool of himself whenever he can. As I wrote above, Trump is in trouble, and you don’t need wishful thinking to reach this conclusion.
“If collusion is not a crime Trump has nothing to worry about.”
Oh, and there’s some weird shit going on in Trump’s family. Ivanka distanced herself from his attacks on the media, and his wife distanced herself from his attack on Lebron James.
Trump has plenty to worry about.
Collusion is not a crime. However, it is still impeachable. So Trump would still have something to worry about.
So, it kind of looks like the weaponized, compromised anti-Democracy human projectile known to the world as Donald J. Trump appears to have finally begun to appreciably slow down in his tumbling path through the American body politic. What follows next? Now that he has lost appreciable amounts of his momentum and his assertiveness, what now? Will the projectile finally come to rest? Will a somewhat smaller version of the alien-propelled president now emerge from the depths of the white house chest cavity? Will it look for sympathy? Or be even more snarling and vicious than its first instar? Remember, this alien thing has a base, a host of supporters on which to feed when it emerges. Stay tuned to the the most excellent horror story ever unleashed on American public by the Murkans.
I have to go out now and fight the fungus Sclerotium rolfsii… southern blight. Thank you climate change. Bye bye.
Slow down? Quite the opposite. His lies are speeding up
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-escalating-war-on-the-truth-is-on-purpose
and his attacks on the media are more vicious. Like Greg, I see this as a sign of increasing desperation from growing pressure.
“Climate septic
I used to use that term but haven’t for a long time. Still think it’s wonderfully descriptive.”
Comic, I gave you a thumb up. Nice AGWers, with no time to show
any appreciation for someone being funny.
It must be those dank and continues cloudy days, in which their lives
revolves around. Even “think green therapy” provides no relief for
their condition.
Fake sceptics! Sad!
“And there’s a mountain of hard evidence implicating Trump and his election campaign in multiple acts of conspiracy – including his own admission yesterday to the very act of conspiracy by his campaign. Don Jnr must be smarting about that particular FUBAR: I hope that Kimberly Guilfoyle is ready to share Jnr with Bubba and a few other long-term inmates of the US penitentiary system…”
Only Conservatives commit crimes, Bernard, but no Socshevikes.!?
Which Eastern European country do you come from, Billy boy?
Tu quoque – logical fallacy.
HOW-TO-END-A-MORONIC-BBD
You denied a surge in knife attacks the UK and Londenstan but
again your ignorance precedes you.
It can only be one of two things, your blabbing ignorance
or being a constant liar.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/knife-crime-now-record-highs-driving-increase/
“Knife crime stands at record highs at over 40,000 offences in the last year, with London being at the epicentre of the violence.
Just this week, on August 1, a 23-year-old man was stabbed to death in Camberwell.
In July, dozens of others were impacted by knife crime in the capital, including a teenage boy who was stabbed on a busy Islington street, a 17-year-old in Camberwell during the day and a middle-aged man inside a Leicester Square casino.
With 40,147 offences, knife crime in England and Wales is now at its highest level since the data began to be collected in 2011.”
“Knife crime has risen for four consecutive years since 2014, when then Home Secretary Theresa May curbed the use of stop and search — a policing tactic officers insist saves lives but which is branded “racist” by campaigns that globalist financier George Soros’s international grantmaking organisation Open Society Foundations has bragged about funding.”
“Earlier this year, Britain’s most senior police chief, the liberal Cressida Dick, asserted that the tactic is a vital tool in preventing knife attacks but admitted that officers are now frightened to stop and search young people for fear of being accused of racism.
English cities bore the brunt of this, with the number of incidents jumping 22 percent in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London from 2016/17 to 2017/18, with the additional 2,643 offences seen in the capital accounting for more than half the total rise nationally.”
“a consultant surgeon based in Nottingham, where the audience heard his major trauma centre had treated as many young knife crime victims aged 15-25 in the past five months as it had in the whole of 2017.”
“These guys are in our hospitals for a long time,” he said, highlighting the resource use resulting from just one patient being hospitalised for four and a half months, and his requiring 19 visits to theatre for surgery.
Presenting figures which showed the huge quantity of blood needed for transfusions, Brooks used his presentation to warn that, if NHS Blood and Transplant “[fails to] collect enough O negative blood donations in the coming weeks, stocks may fall below two days”.
Maybe you can make that bloody dud, K9 dean, Home Secretary. He
has a lot in common with your sub-prime minister.
Stop worrying about my abode location and bone up on facts,
bloke.
No I didn’t. You’re lying. Go on, quote me with a link to the comment. Waiting…
So which Eastern European country are you from?
No fuck face, he responded to it almost immediately after the first dishonest post you made about it.
Not only do you not read the articles you reference you don’t read (or won’t admit to it) the responses that show you lie.
BBD. I don’t understand the Eastern Europe question/assumption or why it would matter anyway.
BillyR would like to sound like an American nutter but actually sounds like he’s from Eastern Europe. Does it matter? It’s interesting that he drops a shitbomb when pushed a little about this instead of answering the question.
Ok. Thanks for answering BBD.
I’m still confused but that’s OK.