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Giuliani Suggests Suing Over Impeachment

Rudy Giuliani, personal counsel to President Donald Trump, declared yesterday that he has received advice by experts to sue members of Congress over impeachment efforts. If true, their expertise must be in areas other than constitutional law or impeachment. Such a lawsuit would be frivolous and it is unsettling that Giuliani would put any credence into such fringe advice.

Calling the impeachment effort as “worse than McCarthy,” Giuliani revealed that he had sought legal advice on the issue: “I had a couple of talks with civil rights lawyers and a constitutional lawyer today and here’s what they’re recommending: that we should bring a lawsuit on behalf of the president and several of the people in the administration, maybe even myself as a lawyer, against the members of Congress individually for violating constitutional rights, violating civil rights.”

In a long parade of uniquely bad ideas, this would be the final climax. First, the allegation of self-dealing in the Ukrainian call would be a valid basis for an article of impeachment. It would still have to be proven and there are defenses for any such trial that I have previously discussed. This would be viewed by a court as a facially legitimate inquiry. Second, courts do not second guess the House on such efforts. While there continues to be a debate over what might be reviewable in an impeachment proceeding, it is exceptionally unlikely that a court would seriously question this effort.

The claim is that the impeachment interferes with a president’s inherent authority over foreign relations under Article II. That is facially frivolous. The White House can object on the basis of executive privilege in any demand for testimony or documents. In Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993), the majority opinion (written by by William Rehnquist) deferred to the Congress in such conflicts, ruling that Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.”  The same is true of the power to impeach.

In other words, this dog won’t hunt.

123 thoughts on “Giuliani Suggests Suing Over Impeachment”

  1. It would serve one major needful purpose. The more you file law suits its the same as int he free states with Recall the more you file recalls or for that matter Iniatives the more money it costs the left. The mechanisms of Recall, Initiative and Suits work in more than one direction and therefore are a useful tool to defeat the illegals of the left from taking office while not fulfilling the requirements such as The Oath of Office.

  2. Interesting article on the responsibilities of the whistleblower:

    “If the anti-Trump complainant did, in fact, refuse to disclose previous disclosures of his allegations to Congress or the news media, he could be subject to felony criminal penalties for making false statements. “…

    “UPDATE: An official confirms the whistleblower failed to disclose prior contacts with House Democrats regarding the allegations of his August 12 complaint. The box in Part 3, Question 1 of the form regarding contacts with Congress or congressional committees was unchecked and left blank. The dates of those contacts were also not disclosed as required. And the specific members and committees that were contacted were likewise not disclosed in the section requiring that information.”

    Report: Anti-Trump Whistleblower Concealed Contacts With House Democrats From Inspector General

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/04/report-anti-trump-whistleblower-concealed-contacts-with-house-democrats-from-inspector-general/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=aa77675a62-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-aa77675a62-84104567

      1. The problem with Schiff is he relies on too many anonymous sources, intentionally misquotes and lies a lot. I think that is a stupid way of behaving but it works on people that have never learned that honesty builds respect.

        A lot of lefties out there that have no self respect.

  3. OT: Emotions that activate policy and control the bureacracy frequently lead to the exact thing those emotions are trying to fight against.

    “Duke Energy application points finger at solar for increased pollution

    RALEIGH — A seven-month investigation and numerous public information requests have revealed the move to increase solar power might be leading to an increase in the very emissions alternative energy sources aim to reduce.”

    https://nsjonline.com/article/2019/08/duke-energy-application-points-finger-at-solar-for-increased-pollution/
    —

    Solution: Those that permit their emotions to overtake common sense and science should be removed from policy making so that systems put in place do not cause more harm than good. We can see that type of problem on the list with the Natasha’s and Anon’s but fortunately they are not involved in policy formation though to our loss others like them are.

  6. OT: Obama administration bungled opioid crisis response: IG report

    By Stephen Dinan
    The Obama administration bungled its response to the nation’s opioid epidemic, according to a stunning inspector general’s report released Tuesday that says the Drug Enforcement Administration allowed painkiller production to soar even as deaths mounted.

    DEA officials failed across the board, said the Justice Department’s inspector general, pointing to a “toxic” environment, lack of data to spot the mounting crisis, and a failure to use tools that could have shut down some of the worst offenders among manufacturers, doctors and pharmacies dealing the drugs.

    “We found that DEA was slow to respond to this growing public health crisis,” said Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general.

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/oct/1/obama-administration-bungled-opioid-crisis-respons/

    1. Allan – oh, no, not a scandal during the Obama administration. Tell me it isn’t so?

  7. Privilege of Speech or Debate
    Members .–This clause represents ”the culmination of a long struggle for parliamentary supremacy. Behind these simple phrases lies a history of conflict between the Commons and the Tudor and Stuart monarchs during which successive monarchs utilized the criminal and civil law to suppress and intimidate critical legislators. Since the Glorious Revolution in Britain, and throughout United States history, the privilege has been recognized as an important protection of the independence and integrity of the legislature.” 380 So Justice Harlan explained the significance of the speech-and-debate clause, the ancestry of which traces back to a clause in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 381 and the history of which traces back almost to the beginning of the development of Parliament as an independent force. 382 ”In the American governmental structure the clause serves the additional function of reinforcing the separation of powers so deliberately established by the Founders.” 383 ”The immunities of the Speech or Debate Clause were not written into the Constitution simply for the personal or private benefit of Members of Congress, but to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators.” 384
    The protection of this clause is not limited to words spoken in debate. ”Committee reports, resolutions, and the act of voting are equally covered, as are ‘things generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it.”’ 385 Thus, so long as legislators are ”acting in the sphere of legitimate legislative activity,” they are ”protected not only from the consequence of litigation’s results but also from the burden of defending themselves.” 386 But the scope of the meaning of ”legislative activity” has its limits. ”The heart of the clause is speech or debate in either House, and insofar as the clause is construed to reach other matters, they must be an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings with respect to the consideration and passage or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House.” 387 Immunity from civil suit, both in law and equity, and from criminal action based on the performance of legislative duties flows from a determination that a challenged act is within the definition of legislative activity, but the Court in the more recent cases appears to have narrowed the concept somewhat.

    1. The ‘Speech and Debate’ clause. It was either Gary Hart or Andrew Jacobs Jr. who once said “‘Speech and Debate’ is what members plead when they get caught taking bribes”.

    2. certainly for a lot of things

      most of all, the doctrine of separation of powers says one branch necessarily can’t judge another

      federal courts have over stepped their bounds habitualy in this century, but impeachment proceedings are a bright line they won’t cross.

      the idea is lame, but, Giuliani is just trolling them with it. It’s a feint, not a serious proposal.

      if you watch fencing, there are a lot of feints, and what they call batting. slapping the other guy’s weapon, but not launching a serious attack. just to see what they do. this is a bat, a feint

  9. Ray McGovern:

    “Note to Nancy Pelosi: Just Ask NSA”

    October 3, 2019

    https://raymcgovern.com/2019/10/03/note-to-nancy-pelosi-just-ask-nsa/

    “Why shadowbox on the July 25 Trump-Zelensky tel. call? Just ask NSA for the pure unedited version

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/03/odd-markings-ellipses-fuel-doubts-about-rough-transcript-trumps-ukraine-call/?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

    “As you aware (because you approved it), NSA intercepts EVERYTHING. Chances are close to 100% NSA has stored what you need. Why not ask?”

  10. Conspiracy Theory Experts Can’t Make Sense Of Trump’s Ukraine Claims

    “Ukraine is the perfect scapegoat for him, because it’s the enemy of Russia,” said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington who regularly visits Ukraine and is writing a book called “How to Lose the Information War.” She noted that a number of Ukraine-linked stories, some of them distorted or exaggerated, have been pulled together by Mr. Trump’s supporters into a single narrative.

    “Now it seems like all of these conspiracy theories are merging into one,” Ms. Jankowicz said. She studies disinformation, she said, but Mr. Trump produced one claim she’d never come across.

    “I do this for a living, and I’d never heard anyone say the servers were in Ukraine,” she said.

    In the 27 months between Mr. Trump’s two citations of the CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory, it has survived despite many denials from CrowdStrike, the F.B.I. and people directly involved in the investigations. It has survived despite the fact that the D.N.C. put one of its hacked servers on display — not in Ukraine but in its Washington offices. It has survived despite the indictment prepared last year by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, laying out in extraordinary detail the actions of 12 named Russian military intelligence officers who hacked the D.N.C. and other election targets.

    The speculation springs from what Mr. Trump has called a “big Dem scam” — the false notion that the F.B.I. never really investigated the D.N.C. hack. In fact, according to people directly involved, CrowdStrike was in regular contact with the bureau in spring 2016 as it examined dozens of servers used by both the D.N.C. and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

    It is true, as Mr. Trump has often tweeted, that F.B.I. agents never took physical possession of the Democrats’ servers. But CrowdStrike supplied the F.B.I. with digital copies of the servers so that the bureau could assess the Russian malware infecting them. The Mueller investigation later confirmed CrowdStrike’s findings.

    Still, the president has clung to the theory linking CrowdStrike, Ukraine and the D.N.C. servers despite the repeated efforts of his aides to dissuade him, Thomas Bossert, his former homeland security adviser, said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “The D.N.C. server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” he said. “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”

    To go in search of the roots of Mr. Trump’s CrowdStrike-Ukraine conspiracy theory is to travel the internet’s most peculiar provinces and the darkest threads on Twitter and Facebook. On 4chan and pro-Trump spaces on Reddit, on websites like ZeroHedge.com and Washington’s Blog, you can find plenty of speculation about evil manipulation by CrowdStrike and secret maneuvers by Ukrainians — often inflamed by Mr. Trump’s own statements.

    Pro-Trump media leaped last week to defend the president’s Ukraine theories. Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show that Mr. Trump’s “reference to CrowdStrike, mark my words, is momentous,” though he did not say why.

    All this mythmaking about the 2016 hack frustrates Robert Johnston, who was the lead investigator for CrowdStrike on the D.N.C. inquiry. Mr. Johnston, a former Marine and Cyber Command operator, said he could make no sense of Mr. Trump’s assertions.

    “It doesn’t connect with anything in my experience,” he said. “I’d be interested in the president of Ukraine’s impression.”

    Mr. Johnston, now chief executive of the cybersecurity company Adlumin, said he was weary of the conspiracies surrounding what he considered a straightforward conclusion. Having seen the digital fingerprints of Russian intelligence in earlier hacking cases, he felt there was little doubt about the identity of the perpetrators.

    “I don’t know how you get to this point,” Mr. Johnston said of the fantasies Mr. Trump has promoted. “This is a story that just won’t die.”

    Edited from: “How A Fringe Theory About Ukraine Took Root In The White House”

    The New York Times, 10/3/19

    1. Nina works for a bunch of olirgarch and Democrat controlled NGOs. She’s a hired gun. her opinion is biased in favor of her masters.

      https://wiczipedia.com/about-2/

      “She is currently a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute, ….

      Previously, she served as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow….

      She has also managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (maybe she’s CIA too huh?) (Nina’s a “color revolution” specialist)

      Her writing has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, Foreign Policy and others.

      Nina was a 2017 Foreign Policy Interrupted Fellow.”

      ME: I DON’T TRUST PEOPLE LIKE NINA

    1. As long as every bank in the world continues to finance waterfront development, global warming with its promise of rising sea levels is a leftwing pipe dream. Nobody loans money on a sure-to-be Atlantis. Ask Obama, he’s got a perfect water view. Oh you deluded suckers.

      1. oh, I think that banks have plenty of delusional people working for them. they finance some really crazy stuff as smaller, yet wiser deals go by. the profit horizon of 1-5 years out drives large capital investment. also, the trend towards automation in banking, leaves fewer and fewer people to actually think about finance and the public good, as mathematical risk and profit models with narrowly restricted factors, more and more drive everything.

        coastal land use and development is also retarded, and skewed by whales like the Obamas, and what their whimsical preferences may be.

        I would take Fukushima as a prime example. Who the hell thought of placing a nuclear plant with that design on a seismic activity line right belly up next to the sea? Surely it took billions to build. Did nobody say UM WHAT ABOUT TSUNAMIS? I know they need a lot of water to run, and Japan is a narrow country but surely the disaster was not entirely unforeseeable.

        There is also a glut of unused development in China, socalled ghost cities, that are still unused.

        Do you think America is devoid of the kind of bean counting geniuses that approved those sorts of things? I think they learned a lot of their stupidity from us. Just a hypothesis.

      2. Mespo, businesses – i own one – are controlled by short term interests. Their life span – and that of their directors – is limited and survival for the next cycle generally rules.

        PS Obama will be dead in something like 30 years max. He doesn’t have anything to worry about pin the island.

        1. Banks make their money with fees. Interest is trifling. Fees. Fees in retail, fees in commercial, fees in real estate, fees in investment banking. Fees. Fees are generated by transactions. Look at a mortgage and compare the interest over a 30 year loan compared to the fees they charge up front. The fees are where it’s at. The interest comes slow and low. Fees, front and fast. Same thing with a lot of investment banking deal making. Fees, fees, fees. Whomever collects interests, some syndicate or bondholders whatever, that’s all once the bank has got paid to do its thing.

          This is the logic of financialization that has driven a lot of nasty changes to our society the past decades. The breakneck pace of social change is a negative externality that mostly harms people not dipping their beaks in all the fees.

        2. But AOC says we’re gone in 12 years! It’s a farce. Nobody is leaving waterfront property because those wealthy enough to own it aren’t fooled by this parlor trick.

          1. mespo – On AOC’s count we are down to 11 and using Greta’s count we are down to 10. No wonder kids don’t want to go to school. Why should they?

    2. the trend may be irreversible. i think it probably is. still, bringing more safe nuclear online, in geographically secure locations not crazy places like Fukushima, but more nuclear coming online will be absolutely necessary just to diversify and secure the energy base, which will be critical to sustain, as adaptation becomes imminently necessary, and God only knows what else will break loose in the meantime.

      thanks David, that’s an interesting thread

      i continue to wonder as do others:

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/01/17/if-progressive-democrats-care-so-much-about-the-climate-why-are-they-trying-to-kill-nuclear-power/#17beface588d

      If Progressive Democrats Care So Much About The Climate, Why Are They Trying to Kill Nuclear Power?

        1. phony is what i call them. this issue is well understood. i posted the brookings institution analysis about the comparative cost and carbon efficiency of various forms of energy and i’ll say it again. most efficient is the newest form of gas. second hydro,. third nuclear. solar is at the bottom.

          people don’t think a lot about another thing, which is what goes into building and maintaining the physical infrastructure for a new energy plant. for example,.even solar requires a lot of steel and chips and glass, and maybe in a big array, concrete too. that means, think about all the carbon it takes to extract the iron ore, smelt it, pour it, move it, mold it, emplace it. think about mining the silica, making the glass, whatever, same idea.

          kind of like the “Green new deal.” In a lot of places with moderate climates, the LAST Thing that will help reduce carbon emissions, is building a bunch of new homes, when the old ones work just fine, and the energy efficiency savings would not pan out for a decade or more. talk about counterproductive!

          and then there is the jevons paradox. what if the new energy sources, lower overall energy sources, and cause greater aggregate demand and consumption of energy of all forms? in other words, a massive increase in bringing renewable energy online might just backfire.

          finally, here’s a question. there is a range of opinion that the Green political hacks have denounced as “climate denial.” guess what? they do that to the Left too,. if you will. Perhaps I should just say the do it in the direction of “Climate doomers” who say its too late already. They pooh pooh those people who say, the change is happening so fast it will trigger cascading effects even if all the climate treaty stuff is successful (which it probably wont be)

          in which case fiddling with these factors will not make any signficant difference.

          but what will happen? Like I said before, coastal flooding, greater intensity of disasters, wider ranges of nearly uninhabitable areas in tropics, etc. all things that will lead to a certainty of two things:

          1. MASSIVE STRAIN ON INFRASTRUCTURE
          2. MASSIVE MIGRATION PUSH TO TEMPERATE ZONES. LIKE USA AND EUROPE. From the third world tropical and coastal regions.

          So a knuckle dragging, right wing, hater like me, who thinks there definitely is a warming trend, whatever the causes, requires prompt attention to ADAPTATION. Because yeah I think it’s going to get a lot hotter, harder, and nobody’s going to stop the third world from growing and using energy no matter what the climate change people in the West want. I have little hope about it not getting worse. about the only hope I can have is that we can adapt and survive. and yeah that can be a discriminating and fierce proposition.

          But just a couple weeks ago it was the big deal at the UN. And the politicians said oh the wonderful angry little girl. Then these pious frauds once they have had their fun, what do they do?

          Do they push through the 3 year long waiting infrastructure bill?
          Do they initiate a public education campaign which focuses on that other critical factor, adaptation, which most people never hear about only “mitigation” like carbon tax or whatever? Nah, no way. It’s out there, but it’s boring i guess. I linked that stuff a bunch of times here and it was a real snoozer.

          No. They trigger the CIA coup on Trump, which obviously has been in the making for a while now.

          I worry about climate change, why would I like Trump? Well at least as a builder and a jobs guy he seemed like he could be trusted to try and build a wall (which may only help 20% more now but when the big migration push comes, I think we’ll be glad we had it) and pass an infrastructure bill, and yeah, he wanted to deconflict with Russia, and not trigger another major possible cause of global warming, which could be, a nuclear exchange.

          Instead the CIA wants to destabilize the Commander in Chief with a continuation of a simmering beef that could just be resolved through the next election if hes such a bad dude the people will have him out in a year huh? well. what do i know.

          i don’t expect you to agree with any of that Benson I just wanted to vent my spleen about it.

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