Below is my column on the catastrophic loss of Congress in the recent decision in favor of the Trump Administration over the testimony of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. This loss is breathtaking for the House of Representatives. I was lead counsel in the litigation over Obamacare and, as part of that victory, we succeeded in getting the district court to recognize the standing of the House of Representatives. This latest decision lays waste to that precedent and eviscerates the ability of the House to enforce its subpoenas.
As I discussed earlier, some have repeated the view of the House managers that the White House was arguing conflicting positions in court and in Congress: arguing that the court cannot enforce subpoenas while telling the House that it should have subpoenaed witnesses. The criticism is superficial. This was one of a number of constitutional claims that the White House wanted to raise with the courts. It would define the lines of separation of all three branches. By seeking judicial review on the ability of Congress to compel such appearances, the Administration was seeking clarity on the relative positions of the Executive and Legislative branches in such disputes. I do not blame the House leadership or the House General Counsel in bringing this action. This was a good case and a bad decision. It must be appealed. Since this is the D.C. Circuit, it is already impacted most cases involving the Congress so an additional adverse decision by the Supreme Court will only make it marginally worse. That is the point of hitting rock bottom.
The decision also shows why there are a variety of contentious constitutional issues that warrant judicial review. It further undermines the basis for Article II of the impeachment.
Here is the column:
The legacy of President Trump could be a matter of debate for decades. Yet victories on executive power will likely govern that legacy, and none may be more notable than the ruling in the case against Donald McGahn by the House Judiciary Committee. The District of Columbia Circuit Court sided with Trump in reversing a lower court decision and refusing to order the appearance before Congress of the former White House counsel. It is a huge victory for the White House in barring such testimony, and also a devastating loss to the authority of Congress in any such future conflicts.
I disagree with the decision and believe not only that Congress has a right to hear from McGahn but that federal courts should protect that right. The decision undermines not only the authority of Congress but also half of the House case against Trump based on its second impeachment article of obstruction of justice. I disagree because, as a Madisonian scholar and former lead counsel for the House of Representatives, I have long favored the authority of Congress in seeking such key witnesses and evidence. I believe this opinion sweeps far too broadly in effectively removing courts from serious interbranch disputes on oversight or impeachment matters.
The court dismisses such conflicts as an “intramural disagreement” and declares that, if it ruled otherwise in this dispute, it would put itself on a slippery slope of constant conflict between the other two branches of government. However, that is precisely where the courts should be, and removing the courts from these disputes will only weaken that system. The new opinion is fractured on its rationale and likely to be appealed.
In the decision, only Judge Thomas Griffith adopted the most sweeping view that federal courts should play no role in such disputes between the branches. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson stated that Congress can go to court but lacked standing in this case. She correctly rejected immunity claims made by McGahn and found that, while “the executive branch received its requested relief, it is difficult to identify any winners here.” The third member of the appeals panel, Judge Judith Rogers, supported greater access of Congress to the courts, a view that I generally share.
The opinion cites impeachment and criminal contempt among the various tools that Congress could use to force concessions on witness demands. However, it casts a long shadow over the basis for the second article of the Trump impeachment. It notes that presidents have withheld evidence from Congress in such disputes throughout history, with similarly defiant positions taken by numerous commanders in chief from President Adams all the way to President Reagan. Furthermore, the court cites the “Fast and Furious” investigation, in which President Obama made equally sweeping claims to withhold evidence from Congress, a position that a judge later said would negate the important foundation of the separation of powers.
During my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, I strongly discouraged the panel from rushing its impeachment, the shortest such investigation of a president in history, and I specifically objected to the second article as premature and abusive. I encouraged the panel to wait until this spring and to subpoena witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton. Otherwise, the House effectively would impeach Trump for going to the courts rather than simply yielding to Congress.
President Nixon and President Clinton both were able to litigate such questions all the way to the Supreme Court before facing impeachment. Under the position of the House, it can first set an artificially short period to produce witnesses or evidence, and then impeach any president who seeks judicial review. Not only was the McGahn case pending in court but the Supreme Court had accepted another case on the authority to refuse such subpoenas. The House refused to wait, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on impeaching Trump by the artificial deadline of Christmas.
This appeals court decision does not mean that Trump did not obstruct Congress. Indeed, I previously criticized the scope of his refusal to share evidence and witnesses. However, it does show that Trump not only had a valid argument in this case but ultimately prevailed in court. This was the argument that lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff and others mocked during the Senate trial. The point is that judges of good faith can disagree on such questions. While I disagree with this decision, there is value in allowing the courts to be heard before seeking the removal of a president for failing to comply with demands from Congress. It is not required by the Constitution, however, it is the difference between an incomplete versus a compelling and successful impeachment article.
Some of the language of the decision undercuts the rush to impeach. It describes these conflicts as a standard component of how the branches work and the Constitution as contemplating negotiation, accommodation, and sometimes retaliation. It does not contemplate a categorical demand followed by a rushed impeachment. By refusing to intervene, the appeals court said the judiciary seeks to allow such disagreements to “play out” toward compromise, as they have countless times before in other cases.
This opinion could of course be spun as meaning that the House did not lose anything by not waiting for the courts, since this court refused to intervene. However, that is not the point. First, two out of three judges do not support a sweeping denial of judicial review. Second, Trump prevailed in this dispute on an argument that was ridiculed by the House managers in a case cited in the impeachment. That shows these disputes remain mired in uncertainty even on the courts. Impeachment requires clarity, and this decision shows that the White House had valid countervailing arguments. The court noted for Trump, given the “weighty interest in the confidentiality of his communications, one concern is that the Congress, susceptible to the fruits of political temptation would not proceed with all the protection that a district court will be obliged to provide” otherwise.
The decision in this case marks one of the greatest losses in the history of the House of Representatives. If it stands, it will threaten the ability of all committees to enforce oversight authority, and the House, having hit rock bottom, has no alternative but to appeal. Whatever the outcome will be in the litigation going forward, the lower chamber should certainly take a second to contemplate the recent past. Congress was wrong in rushing to impeach the president over these evidentiary disputes, and its second article was both premature and presumptuous in claiming obstruction.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law for George Washington University and served as the last lead counsel during a Senate impeachment trial. He testified as a witness expert in the House Judiciary Committee hearing during the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. He was also lead counsel representing the United States House of Representatives in litigation over Obamacare.
MollyG — Upon reading what I could readily find, it does appear that you are correct. I don’t think that the matter has ever arisen.
Allan, once again, if you expect me to read your comment, you have to start over at the top. On this mobile device my limit is 3 or maybe 4 levels of replys to replys …
The decision in this case marks one of the greatest Progressive losses in the history of the House of Representatives. If it stands, it will threaten the ability of all committees to undermine our electoral process, and the House, having hit rock bottom, has no alternative but to appeal.
It failed because the underlying basis for impeachment was never about the President’s alleged abuse of power or obstruction of Congress. House Democrats had spent 3 years abusing their own power trying to find anything they could use to impeach this President. When Mueller failed to deliver anything impeachable, the Democrats concocted the QPQ charge and ran with that for impeachment. They chose to forego an exhaustive investigation for two reasons: 1. their goal was not to remove the President from office through impeachment; it was always to influence the 2020 election. 2. they were better off leaving the electorate to believe they would have had a case if only…, rather than allowing the proper course to conclude deep into the election cycle they never had a case in the first place.
This is not some tragic loss for the House of Representatives. This is a magnificent gain for the People they represent.
Whatever the outcome will be in the litigation going forward, the lower chamber should certainly take a second to contemplate the recent past. Congress was wrong in rushing to impeach the president over these evidentiary disputes, and its second article was both premature and presumptuous in claiming obstruction.
Massive reset coming to USA, and nothing the elites can do to stop it, because God will be at the forefront of the Kingdom revolution.
Ecclesiastes 5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.
Psalm 89:14 Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.
The take away is it’s wrong to do what the left did but it’s criminal to do it for a selected portion of government. For the others they should get at least an apology. Can the press be far behind in using their forced but meaning I’m sorries in place of the word witnesses? Or educators to defend their use of social promotions. Or the government for treating women as second class citizens and mere baby factories in excluding them from the still on going draft system of registrations?
folks before you opine too much on JT’s article try reading it first, and if you didn’t understand the underlying issue of why the impeachment should have waited until the article III courts could parse the POTUS arguments against the subpoenas in the first place, reread JT on that too.
once you do, if you do, then you will be able to understand the prophetic genius of Jimmy Trafficante, who was thrown out of Congress for his conviction on a flimsy charge of corruption, who warned and diagnosed that it was in severe institutional decline, and would continue to decline, if it kept to its course. which it certainly has!
Kurtz favors denim suits (w/ bell bottoms) and has his wife comb his hair with a weed-whacker.
that’s Jimmy. I only wear wool and cotton. My woman cuts my hair and it looks great. What’s left of it.
https://reason.com/2014/09/28/jim-traficant-19412014/
Admire your belief impeachment is still a relevant process, Professor.
No impeachment case, no matter how well prepared, would’ve worked with the current Senate. It still was a valiant effort. With all this insistence on there being an underlying crime (clearly NOT stated by the founders) it’s time to call the bluff and drop the Justice Dept. guidelines on not indicting sitting presidents. Of course that will require determining just exactly what Presidents can be indicted for…but a worthy discussion nonetheless.
My understanding of the Constitution is that President cannot be indicted for a federal statutory crime. First would have to come impeachment and conviction by the Senate. After that, the person is no longer President and so can be indicted.
Agreed. I’m just saying the process is obsolete, was written before there were individual parties and partisanship, hell, before criminality was as well defined as it is now. I get the protections afforded the office of the executive and they work when there is a good faith arrangement. Mr. Trump is beginning to prove the limitations of such an arrangement.
The constitution does not say anything about a president not being able to be indicted for crimes.
Yes it does. What is first required is an impeachment conviction whereupon the now former president is an ordinary citizen and subject to indictment for federal statutory crimes.
No. It says that they remain liable to conviction after impeachment, but I no way says that they can’t be indicted in office absent impeachment. I know they some read between the lines to get that, but the actual text is silent.
Not the way I read it.
I know. And I wish people would make a clear distinction between what the constitution says and how they interpret what it says.
It’s a DOJ opinion and protocol developed after Watergate.
Paulie,
You are missing the main point. It was a fake, a sham, baseless charges with fabricated witnesses and fantastical evidence.
There was no impeachment. For you to prejudge the senate is very ingenuine and makes you guilty of your very accusation.
Krista, you hit the nail on the head.
No impeachment case, no matter how well prepared, would’ve worked with the current Senate. It still was a valiant effort
Actually, it was an utter fraud. Democrats never stop lying in this day and age.
When the fou itShays, wear it.
The House dug down to rock bottom. They are in holy hell. The House belongs there. The sanctuary voters in CA need to vote Adam Corona Schiff out of office. Look at his eyes! He is crazy.
I’m wondering what will
Pelosi/Shift/Nadler cook up next.
Nothing. Pelosi’s heart isn’t into it.
Allan, there are no “impeachment rules”, just the will of the House of Representatives.
As for Obomber, he is no longer prez; instead we have the impeached King Donald of the Order of Bone Spurs.
Trump was impeached but not convicted because he did not commit a crime. Obama was not impeached but did commit multiple “crimes” based on today’s standards.
That makes Obama bad not Trump. Yet you use a perjorative word, king, for Trump and are silent on Obama. How does that make you look?
Allan, a High Crime is not necessarily a statutory crime. Also, King Donald simply ignores the Constitution, for example the budgetary authority of Congress.
I think that my calling the prior prez Obomber expresses my opinion.
David, re Obama: I am not asking how you liked him as a President rather if you recognized how he weaponized certain agencies and to recognize that Trump has done nothing close to as bad as Obama. You brought up budget authority. You would have to be more specific. So far some have complained but he remained in his bugetary authority and consistent with presidence and court decisions so you don’t have a legitimate complaint except against Congress that should do a better job writing legislation. Take note how when his decisions go to court his decisions for the most part in the higher courts were judged in his favor.
No. The Donald wants to move DoD allocated funds to another agency to pay for his border wall. That violates congressional intent.
For that alone he has violated his oath of office. Probably doesn’t even understand it. A true Manhattan Mafia type.
David, what agency do you think he moved the funds to. Did you ever watch a WW2 movie. Did you notice that when the troops advanced and faced a river (or something else) they would build their own bridge? You realize that the military didn’t get a fill up for their tanks and a Sunoco station and they didn’t get outside caterers to propare hot food, right?
The border agency.
David how many civil engineers does the “border agency” employ?
Supreme Court: Trump can use Pentagon funds for border wall
https://apnews.com/5d893d388c254c7fa83a1570112ae90e
Yeah! You tell him!
Why couldn’t he have served like Clinton and Obama did?
Huh?
DBB:
“Allan, there are no “impeachment rules”, just the will of the House of Representatives.”
******************
Well, there are rules for both chambers in their respective roles. More unlettered legal opinions from you.Stay in your own lane. You won’t get run over as much.
Here are the House’s Rules:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45769.pdf
And here you can find the Senate’s:
https://www.senate.gov/reference/Index/Impeachment.htm
Changed should the majority so dictate.
You mean like every rule?
Not those in the Constitution.
Mespo The article that Alan posted was written by Victor David Hanson and it was his title.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/01/new-impeachment-rules-would-snare-obama/
The shoe on the other foot:
————————————————–New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama
Obama was not impeached not because he did not do things that Donald Trump did, but because his opposition in the House did not do what Democrats later most willingly did: attempt a coup to remove a president without cause.
Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person.
Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid—even amid his worst scandals and dangerous policies. But we are now in a new age, whose protocols might have made it impossible for the Obama Administration to have finished two terms.
Remember, his administration ran some 2,000 guns to Mexican cartels in some hare-brained scheme to monitor violence spilling into the United States. Under the new customs, he should have been impeached for instructing Attorney General Eric Holder to refuse to testify to Congress about Fast and Furious, or at least for not handing over subpoenaed documents. Imagine a Trump gun-walking scheme in Mexico.
It was bad enough that Holder was the first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress, well aside from the embarrassment of his unhinged outbursts about “my people” (hint: his “my” did not mean Americans of all races and creeds). We all remember Holder’s lunatic dismissals of his own country as “a nation of cowards.” (Imagine Bill Barr referring to “my people” or calling Americans cowards)
Fine—politicians and bureaucrats misspeak. It is no surprise that radical progressives like Holder are both partisans and tribalists or that they don’t always have positive thoughts about America, past or present. But Obama won the election. So voters had ample warning from his past that he would likely put as many leftists as he wished into government. He had the legal right and political rationale to do so, without his opponents inventing crimes to remove them.
At least he did before the Trump hysteria.
Criminalizing Politics
I once served briefly on the nonpartisan presidentially appointed American Battlefield Monuments Commission that oversees the cemeteries and graves of Americans who died and were buried overseas. The fellow commissioners, dedicated professionals with far longer tenures on the commission than my own, were never political but shared a common commitment to protect and enhance the integrity of one of America’s most hallowed institutions. Yet all of us were summarily fired, shortly after Obama was elected in 2008, and told to surrender immediately our official passports and vacate the commission. As a result, the board went inert until belated new Obama appointments were made.
Again, fine, I thought at the time. Such is the way of all politics when another party takes the White House. I most certainly did not think Obama was creating a “climate of fear” or was “paranoid” in weeding out, even from nonpartisan, unpaid honorific posts, any non-supporters.
Nor did I think it was so odd when Obama went much further, and fired dozens of U.S. attorney holdovers from the Bush Administration. “Elections matter,” I remember Eric Holder saying of the mass firings at the time. He was right; they do. Clinton fired far more prosecutors than did Trump—as was his perfect right as well. So, who was to say that Obama was “paranoid” in “eliminating” potential critics, whether attorneys, government appointees, or ambassadors?
Who knows? If I were president, I might well have fired myself from even such a nonpartisan commission. Who knows? Had Obama left in office a Bush holdover federal attorney, the partisan might have become a Viva la résistance“Resister”, or invoked the Logan Act to hound one of the president’s own liberal appointees, or impeded his administration, or refused to carry out a presidential executive order, or helped to surveil Obama appointees, or even leaked confidential presidential conversations to the media, or called up the New York Times and Washington Post to give a rendition of an Obama phone call to the president of Mexico, or might have written an anonymous op-ed for the New York Times?
For that matter, I certainly did not join any “Resistance” in 2009—on the sick rationale that Obama might be a Nazi-like interloper who had occupied the United States as Hitler did France, and sent us true patriots into the Maquis to “resist.”
Do not insult our collective intelligence by suggesting that Donald J. Trump abused the Constitution and the office of president in a way that would have been unthinkable to Barack Obama.
Obama was elected for four years. We critics lost the 2008 election, and would have to wait four years to send him home, or, as it turned out in 2012, eight years to find relief. That is the American way. Obama’s clever campaign made both McCain’s and Romney’s amateurish in comparison, and so there was a logic in his victory over two inept candidates, even if both would have made better presidents.
We don’t recall either the media or critics suggesting that Obama was crazy in his often repeated “elections matter” and “I won” hyper-partisanship, or that he should have been removed under the 25th Amendment for silly apologies tours or riffs on the Crusades or Americans not being exceptional or his adolescent furtive duck-outs to have a smoke.
No mainstream pundit claimed Obama was a pathological liar for making up most of his “autobiography” or flat-out lying about Obamacare. When Reggie Love claimed he and a bored Obama played spades during the Bin Laden raid, few paid much attention. Nor did Obama do anything impeachable for stupidly and frequently weighing in during ongoing arrests and criminal proceedings—such as those of the Skip Gates Cambridge psychodrama or the Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin shootings.
The Bowe Bergdahl disastrous swap was illegal, dangerous, and stupid, but not therein grounds for impeachment. Nor was impeachable the even worse Iran Deal that deliberately created an echo chamber among obsequious media to hide key elements of the “treaty”—hostage payoffs and nocturnal shipments of Danegeld. After all, presidents sometimes do stupid stuff. If we impeached every president for chicanery, we would have had no Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus and rounded up Copperhead opponents, or FDR who put U.S. citizens of Japanese descent into detention camps.
All presidents can get rough in their language. I noted and criticized Obama’s occasional potty mouth (e.g. “teabaggers”) and his puerile braggadocio about taking guns to knife fights, getting in their faces, and punishing enemies. All that was silly and nauseous, but certainly not proof that Obama should have been impeached or become the object of a FBI, CIA, or special counsel investigation.
Scandal Upon Scandal
I don’t know quite what “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress” mean in the context of impeachment. But if they now exist as legitimate impeachable offenses, then we should have called for Obama’s impeachment when he refused congressional subpoenas in the Fast and Furious mess, subverted the treaty-making prerogative of the U.S. Senate with the Iran deal, and simply nullified federal immigration law with executive-order amnesties and laxities in a manner that on over 20 prior occasions he had warned supporters that to do so would have been illegal and monarchical.
When Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment and the subsequent testimonies of others established that the Obama IRS deliberately sabotaged conservative nonprofits to emasculate their criticism during the 2012 election, I thought the gambit was outrageous, even criminal. But I assumed that we still should let the voters in a few months, not a special prosecutor, decide to what degree Obama himself was directly responsible for such skullduggery.
Ditto our former president’s outrageous quid pro quo deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was caught in a web of pre-election deceit and finagling, this time on a hot mic in Seoul. Even from inadvertent snippets, it was clear Obama was outlining how he would consider being flexible on missile defense in Europe (and later he was so elastic that he canceled the needed project) if “Vladimir” would just give him some space before his reelection bid. And Vladimir did just that by putting off his invasions of Crimea and Ukraine until after Obama was safely reelected.
What is little noticed about Obama quid pro quo is that he and Putin actually went through with it—and to the clear detriment of Eastern Europe, Crimea, Ukraine, and U.S. security. Remember, the hot mic was an inadvertent public reminder, an encapsulation of what had likely been spoken earlier in private and at length.
We did not need a special counsel to investigate the disastrous reset policy and years of Russian appeasement that had reversed George W. Bush’s sanctions after Putin’s 2008 invasion of Ossetia. I thought it outrageous, but not proof of impeachable “collusion,” that Obama refused to sell the hard-pressed Ukrainians Javelin anti-tank missiles, in fears of agitating “Vladimir.” We still rue that John Kerry foolishly invited Putin into the Middle East after a 40-year Russian hiatus. All that Obama could offer to Putin for years of election interference was a lame “cut it out.” But then again, he just knew Hillary was going to win and did not wish to give the sure loser Trump any grounds for whining about the election results.
After the Benghazi hearings—another pre-reelection scandal—it was obvious that the Obama administration had been caught flat-out lying. It had systematically relaxed security in Libya after its disastrous regime-change bombing of Gaddafi (remember Hilary Clinton’s “We came, we saw . . . he died”? [Cackle! cackle!]), and then lied by denying such laxity had led to American deaths.
Then it prevaricated yet again to cover up that lie by claiming it was impossible to send aid to our fighters trapped and in extremis.
Then it lied still once more about the lies about the lies by claiming that a single obscure video maker had caused the mayhem. Therefore, Obama summarily had a pathetic resident alien fall guy Nakoula Basseley Nakoula jailed on a trumped-up charge of a minor parole violation.
According to the new progressive standards, we were all wrong to simply snooze when Obama overreached.
Speaking of civil liberties, was it an impeachable offense to monitor the communications of journalists like the Associated Press reporters and Fox News’s James Rosen? Why did Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan lie twice under oath to Congress and why did James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, also perjure himself? Weren’t those greater offenses than the campaign contribution violation of Dinesh D’Souza’s that sent him to jail? Why did the Obama Administration tap the communications of foreign leaders from Benjamin Netanyahu to Angela Merkel? And why did it collude, using U.S. taxpayer dollars no less, with the opposition in the Israeli election of 2015 in hopes of defeating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Are not, we are told, governments not to interfere in the free elections of other countries?
Who set or tolerated such a corrupt culture?
Still, excesses happen. I did not argue that Obama should be impeached for such flagrant sabotages of the rule of law—neither when James Comey interfered in the 2016 election with his schizophrenic press conferences and confused and contradictory public statements, nor when Attorney General Loretta Lynch met secretly with Bill Clinton on a tarmac at the Phoenix airport and hid such a meeting.
I don’t remember anyone calling for mass firings, but then again Obama kept quiet how his FBI and Justice Department were warping the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance courts to spy on Carter Page in hopes of finding dirt on Donald Trump before the election. Comey, Brennan, and Clapper were all briefing Obama on their illegal activity—a fact that might explain why they are now so sure they will never be held to account.
Perhaps without such Obama-appointed scoundrels, there would have followed no “Crossfire Hurricane” hit job that seeded a Clinton-bought phony dossier on Trump, her campaign rival, throughout the highest levels of the Obama Administration and the media, and thus ensured it bore fruit before the 2016 election.
Insulting Our Collective Intelligence
The media, the current progressive party, and the unhinged punditocracy have redefined all of the above behavior. According to their own standards, we were all wrong to simply snooze when Obama overreached.
Under our just established current rules of presidential audit, Obama obstructed Congress by ignoring subpoenas and invoking executive privilege. He abused his power by making up immigration law and undermining the enforcement of existing statutes. Presidents are supposed to faithfully execute our laws, not undermine them or make them up. Obama allowed sanctuary cities to openly negate federal law and went after the state of Arizona when it dared to help to enforce federal law.
Obama weaponized federal agencies like the IRS, and used his presidential leverage to go after the Trump campaign and transition, by using Hillary Clinton’s hired foreign national, Christopher Steele, to dump false information before an election. The Obama scandal-ridden Veterans Administration was a veritable wreck. People died in Benghazi, at VA hospitals, in Fast and Furious, and because of the Iran Deal and the Bergdahl swap.
Obama cut quid pro quo deals with foreign leaders to assist his own reelection at the expense of the nation’s security. He paid one of the highest fines leveled in the history of federal financing of campaigns, for flagrant violations in 2008—a fact that was mysteriously not released to the public and voters by federal officials until four years later and only after Obama was safely reelected in 2012.
Under Obama’s supervision, foreign money and foreign actors improperly played roles in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections. Meanwhile, Eric Holder ignored clear evidence of election interference at the polls by dropping charges against New Black Panther Party activists intimidating voters.
In terms of the current pettiness in the context of the various complaints against Trump, we forget that Obama likewise never released his medical records (other than a boilerplate one-page “summary” from his doctor), played an excessive amount of golf, lied repeatedly with assurance that Americans would neither lose their doctors nor health plans under Obamacare, and in general presaged what is now considered alleged proof of Trump’s unfitness to be president.
Neither Adam Schiff nor Nancy Pelosi offered a word of rebuke about Russia’s interest in Uranium One, Bill Clinton’s speaking in Moscow, huge donations to the Clinton Foundation from Russian-connected oligarchs, the cancellation of anti-Russian missile defense or the denial of Javelins to Ukraine—much less that a bought foreign national worked for Hillary Clinton in league with Russian actors to smear her opponent before the election—a fact known again to President Obama whose intelligence agencies worked hand-in-glove with the Steele dossier.
OK and fine. But do not insult our collective intelligence by suggesting that Donald J. Trump abused the Constitution and the office of president in a way that would have been unthinkable to Barack Obama.
Obama was not impeached not because he did not do things that are now defined as impeachable, but because his opposition in the House did not do what Democrats later most willingly did: attempt a coup to remove a president without cause.
The Constitution states that it is entirely up to the House of Representatives. Impeachment, that is.
In other words David, we can have an entire Democratic House filled with monkeys and impeachment would be up to them. Yes, we know that but we expect Democratic leaders to act more intelligently than monkeys.
Knowing that and reading as far as you got in the article do you not see that rational cause for impeachment of Obama existed throughout his administration? Was he impeached? No. The Republicans chose not to act like a group of monkeys.
Are you able to learn anything from this crazyness we see coming from the left?
I don’t know what it takes to be elected to the House of Representatives, but I am confident that being an adult human being and a citizen of the state and district are the minimum qualifications.
As for abilities, the current crop of Republicants show none. Wrecking the place, mostly.
“Wrecking the place, mostly.
David, you must admit your statement was a pretty empty statement.
You don’t know the damage that my representative does.
Nor have you considered judicial appointments.
I have seen inappropriate judges but mostly from the left. During this administration we have seen a slew of Democratic judges that think they are legislators, not judges.
Allan, I believe you left off the information on who wrote the article you posted. Victor Davis Hanson
https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/01/new-impeachment-rules-would-snare-obama/
He does it all the time.
And Allan (below) is here, with the name-calling, imitating the bully-in-chief.
Anonymous the Stupid, when I use your name that is not name-calling. It is a descriptive name that characterizes you extremely well. You demonstrate your Stupidity daily and most people on the blog know that. You are too Stupid to see it.
Allan is a champion of projection. We continue to call him Allaninny and, god knows, he spews his Allanonsense on this blog, day after day after day after day… It’s his calling. He believes that he’s smart, but we know better. Without this little blog, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
We don’t like to name-call, but it’s Allan’s language. He doesn’t understand anything else, man-child that he is.
He’s a creep.
Anonymous the Stupid your other half is coming through loud and clear, the Brainless Wonder. These are not bad words. They are descriptive of what you are and what you will remain for your term here on earth. Take Fido out for a walk.
Allan the Idiot call this place “home.”
Allan the Idiot has a nice ring to it.
Yes, Gabby, I left out the name and thank you for posting and giving one of the smartest comentators recognition. I frequently no longer spend the time digging up the name and http because Paint Chips looks at where the piece comes from and then states its an obscure journal. He virtually only accepts WaPo and the NYSlimes. Additionally I like giving Anonymous the Stupid a chance to do something useful. I hope you enjoyed this excellent opinion piece.
Obama must have been impeached for violating the Constitution and the perjurious defrauding America.
Barack Obama will NEVER be eligible to be U.S. president.
Barack Obama’s father was a foreign citizen at the time of his birth.
– A “citizen” could only have been President at the time of the adoption of the Constitution – not after.
– The U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5, requires the President to be a “natural born citizen,” which, by definition in the Law of Nations, requires “parents who are citizens” at the time of birth of the candidate and that he be “…born of a father who is a citizen;…”
– Ben Franklin thanked Charles Dumas for copies of the Law of Nations which “…has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting,…”
– The Jay/Washington letter of July, 1787, raised the presidential requirement from citizen to “natural born citizen” to place a “strong check” against foreign allegiances by the commander-in-chief.
– Every American President before Obama had two parents who were American citizens.
– The Constitution is not a dictionary and does not define words or phrases like “natural born citizen” as a dictionary, while the Law of Nations,1758, did.
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Law of Nations, Vattel, 1758
Book 1, Ch. 19
§ 212. Citizens and natives.
“The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”
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Ben Franklin letter December 9, 1775, thanking Charles Dumas for 3 copies of the Law of Nations:
“…I am much obliged by the kind present you have made us of your edition of Vattel. It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations. Accordingly that copy, which I kept, (after depositing one in our own public library here, and sending the other to the College of Massachusetts Bay, as you directed,) has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress, now sitting, who are much pleased with your notes and preface, and have entertained a high and just esteem for their author…”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To George Washington from John Jay, 25 July 1787
From John Jay
New York 25 July 1787
Dear Sir
I was this morning honored with your Excellency’s Favor of the 22d
Inst: & immediately delivered the Letter it enclosed to Commodore
Jones, who being detained by Business, did not go in the french Packet,
which sailed Yesterday.
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to
provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the
administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief
of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolved on, any but a natural born Citizen.
Mrs Jay is obliged by your attention, and assures You of her perfect
Esteem & Regard—with similar Sentiments the most cordial and sincere
I remain Dear Sir Your faithful Friend & Servt
John Jay
Alan, this must be the longest article anyone ever posted to the blog. Not that I read it, mind you. I could cover a lot of real news in the time it would take to get through this UNSOURCED material.
Paint Chips, yes, it was very long but Obama committed a lot of very bad deeds. Hanson tried to limit what he said to the most easily understood yet eggregious actions of that administration. You wouldn’t be interested because you don’t think.
Comrade Obongo committed almost as many “bad,” illegal and unconstitutional “deeds” as the despotic and dictatorial tyrant, “Crazy Abe” Lincoln, during his illegitimate, illegal, unconstitutional and brutal “Reign of Terror.”
George you defeat your own purposes. Keep on.
“The decision in this case marks one of the greatest losses in the history of the House of Representatives.”
The US House has been a sh!thole since Pelosi, Nadler, etc and the Senate made excuses for Bill Clinton’s high crimes and misdemeanors. your belief that the US government works since Bill Clinton is breathtaking.
You really are in the wrong career.
Bill Clinton ordered the CIA to illegally assume control of the investigation and paid Boeing for it’s “spontaneous fuel tank explosion” comment after the Navy accidentally shot down Flight 800 in the days leading up to Clinton’s re-election; precisely the same scenario replayed recently in Iran wherein we saw the inadvertent shoot-down of a passenger airliner over Tehran.
Quite the opposite JT. The decision in this case supports impeachment. The court ruled that they do not have the power to resolve these types of disputes, and it must be the political process that solves it instead. That political process is impeachment. Trump refused to comply with the subpoenas, the courts reused to rule on the merits of the case, thus impeachment is all that is left.
Yes, that is close.
Roughly, “Come testify to Congress or we impeach your boss.”
Please impeach Trump again. The DNC is barely standing as a political party and another round of TDS Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi smelling salts will send them over the cliff forevermore
And then The Donald will become the first and only Prez to be impeached twice!
David, taking note of the article you read at least partly you would note that according to the standards of impeachment set by Democrats Obama should have been impeached several dozen times for things that were “criminal”.
Who is worse the killer that kills a dozen people but is not indicted for his crimes or
the individual who passed a red light and was stopped by the police?
Obama is no longer prez.
No Obama is no longer President but if Democrats are so willing to indict a President they had tremendous cause under the Obama administration and almost none under Trump’s. What does that tell you about the Democrats that are sitting in Congress?
That they hate The Donald?
“That they hate The Donald?”
We understand the Democrats dislike the President for personal reasons and disagree with his philosophy. Hate is a stupid thing for legislators to act on. I guess you are calling most Democratic legislators stupid. I agree with you.
… And the first president to be acquitted twice..,and then reelected.
The House/Dem’s, having pursued impeachment when & how they did, demonstrated both childish incompetence and a complete loss of moral compass. I’m grateful for this court’s decision that gives the DNC’s hubris a good swift smack that hopefully will realign their misguided direction.
Such attitudes are how we loose our republican form of government.
Voting for Democrats is how we lose our Republican form of government.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
That’s foolish.
The Republicants don’t know how to govern.
David, is criminal acts the way to govern?
No.
Then you must admit that the Obama Administration didn’t govern very well.
Ho Hum, folks, Trump has packed the federal judiciary, so get ready for more authoritarian rulings in favor of the dictator, ’cause it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.
Chuck – I think the total is 197 new judges confirmed.
Irrespective of the Nixon and Clinton affairs, I don’t see anything in the Constitution which in any way requires a supoena for either house to compel testimony from any one in the executive branch. Such are not court appearances.
What happens under English common law, from which impeachment was obtained?
The Democrats/Liberals will use any means to accomplish their ends of regaining power. They will ignore all previous precedent (both legal precedent and tradition), all logic, all civility and use scorched earth tactics if you stand in the way of their power grabs. They continue to lose in the courts against Trump because they have no concept of legality – they only understand power and their abuse of it. I await the remaining IG indictments and the pardons of Flynn and others. The Democrats have turned into a party of a vile sickness and hatred. I’m glad the courts have been delivering the vaccine against them.
I disagree with the decision and believe not only that Congress has a right to hear from McGahn but that federal courts should protect that right.
McGahan was a confidential employee. If they have a right to hear from him, the other branches properly have a right to compel testimony from (1) judge’s clerks and (2) Congressional staff.
==
What’s amusing is that your mind is so involved in the legal questions that you’ve forgotten that you may be the only actor for whom these questions are of any consequence at the moment in time. They certainly do not matter to the other law faculty who testified, who are fully on board with this lawfare. The courts are too badly corrupted and discredited to resolve disputes in a manner that is consensually satisfying.
No, only congress.
privilege is a judicial doctrine and it can be delimited by the judiciary. it gets stripped in civil cases at times, in some situations. discovery is precisely one of those situations, depending on various factors.
it’s also an ethical issue, it’s limited in the rules of professional conduct. so a lawyer representing a criminal may have a stronger privilege than a run of the mill civil representation, so as to give effect to the right to remain silent, and due process rights. but that is backward looking. the privilege is not to be used to perpetrate a forward looking fraud, for example, or to directly assist in the commission of crime… so it would be a dangerous precedent to create an absolute privilege. lawyer confidentiality is a qualified privilege and it always was.
Congress has the power to issue subpoeanas that will force lawyers to testify. the subpoeanas they sent out in this episode were defective. They could have rectified all that but they were in a big hurry.
Moreover, if we understand that the Congress is the ultimate lawmaker, than it can just pass a law that says so, even to the extent of over-riding an adverse article III decision, provided that the proper votes are taken, of course, and depending on the issue that might mean constitutional amendment of course
JT is not suggesting that the article III courts are the supreme branch, they do however have a legit role in mediating disputes between article I and II branches.
It is squarely the fault of the Democrat leadership that they have obscured and fumbled this issue.
Where does the Constitution specify such a mediating role?
it is implicit– however, explicit authority goes back to this case, which established judicial review of laws by the SCOTUS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
the system does not HAVE to be this way, but without it, there would be a lot more constitutional conflicts between branches. the institution of “judicial review” and the analogous rule of article III courts in mediating claims of privilege between branches, is part of the genius of the American system, to have article III courts mediate at times
even so, each branch may presume to refuse judicial review and act on its own constitutional authority. this is a very interesting area of government and one that is more defined in history by power than by law.
which of course takes us back to Thrasymachus
It is sad to see Trump win this decision, I so wanted the House to win. /sarc