Beaconator
Valued Senior Member
If I had been sued as many times as our current President... For the reasons he has been... I would believe the gov doesn't work as it supposedly should.[1/3]
There are a couple things about this assessment worth noting:
The entirety of the surprisingly short White House argument is online … and I think it's fair to say it is not an impressive document. Paul Waldman joked, "[It] reads as though it was written by a ninth-grader who saw an episode of Law & Order and learned just enough legal terms to throw them around incorrectly."
But while it's true that most of the missive was familiar palaver, there was one element worth dwelling on.
At the top of the document's second full page, the president's lawyers argued that the first article of impeachment approved by the House "fails on its face to state an impeachable offense." It's a curious argument: the first article of impeachment charges Trump with abusing the powers of his office. By the White House's latest reasoning, that's not something a president can or should be impeached for having done.
(Benen↱)
The latter point is striking, and for those accustomed to the ways of superficial political back-and-forthing it becomes difficult to chain this one to an anchor, not for any lack of line or even boat, but because there is such a plethora of anchors littering the sound like detritus, we can choose, "Oh, let's go with that one," and someone else can say—
• 「Which one? I can't tell which one you mean? Sure, you say you're pointing to it on the map but I'm looking all around and I just can't see what you're pointing at. You say it's the fourth one from the left, but which fourth and what is left?」
—pretty much whatever comes to mind. For instance, it's one thing to recall decades of GOP and conservative complaint how Democrats and socialists and liberals and radicals were all corrupt, and our point that Republicans are describing themselves. No, really, here are a few examples. These days, all a conservative need do is pretend ignorance.
But think back on Republican complaints that government just doesn't work, or that Democrats and liberals and socialists and radicals are all just corrupt. Turns out those conservaties were describing themselves. On corruption and dysfunction, what can anyone say when the argument requires that abuse of office is not an impeachable offense?
And wait for conservatives to pretend they don't recall those days, or Reaganesque sentimment about nine words they used to quote like scripture.
But it's true, the logical consequences of Donald Trump's argument include that abusing public office is not grounds for removal, and is not even impeachable.
So … what was all that about Obama's Watergate, over the years? And and the chatter about impeaching Obama? Think of it this way: What is impeachable? Say what we will about Bill Clinton's predatory behavior, but that was not a sincere impeachment, because very few actually wanted to set the standard of removing a president for (¡ahem!) lying about an extramarital affair; the point was to exploit the alleged victims anew in order to embarrass political opponents, and then just get on with the extramarital affairs and sexual harrassment and sexual assaults. That's why they didn't remove him from office, and instead negotiated a censure, so they could put it on his political record forever.
For anyone not in the GOP who played along, there was always a pretense that this was necessary, but society didn't enforced it through the intervening period.
Nonetheless, illegal drug deals in order to arm terrorists one has an appearance of owing a favor for having manipulated their geopolitics in order to affect an American election isn't an impeachable offense. Lying about extramarital affairs is. Lying about national security in order to trigger a war isn't an impeachable offense. Impeachment arguments against Obama included a racist conspiracy theory, attending both science and law in his administration's regard for transgender, and incoherent wailing about Benghazi that never matched the facts. Toward that end, Minority Leader McCarthy's (R-CA23) remarks in the debate to transmit the Articles were a perfect example: As he denounced the House's efforts, his remark about impeaching Trump forever reminds of the Clinton censure, and his general denunciation of the House investigation sounded more like a description of the Issa/Gowdy investigations and McCarthy's own boast that the whole point was to harm political opponents. One Republican member of Congress even suggested Obama argued to be impeached simply because Republicans didn't like the president's political agenda. Senators Kyl (R-AZ) and Coburn (R-OK) suggested impeaching Obama about immigration policy, in 2012 and 2013 respectively, and the latter's plays into a stupid bit when Speaker Boehner demanded Congress have a role in executive matters regarding immigration, saw the REpublican bill fail because his own caucus turned on him, publicly told President Obama to use his executive power, and then sued to stop that executive action.
Compared to any of that, President Trump's defense argues that abuse of power is not itself an impeachable act:
The first Article fails on its face to state an impeachable offense. It alleges no crimes at all, let alone "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," as required by the Constitution. In fact, it alleges no violation of law whatsoever. House Democrats' "abuse of power" claim would do lasting damage to the separation of powers under the Constitution.
(Sekulow and Cipollone↱)
The next paragraph leads with the assertion, "The first Article also fails on the facts …", and the key word, there, is, "also". That is, the second paragraph argues that, "President Trump has not in any way 'abused the powers of the Presidency'". Given the evidence against Trump, we can easily see why the attorneys led with pretending the refusal to faithfully execute the laws in order to extort a bribe isn't an impeachable offense.
†
The Waldman joke, though, that the Trump defense, "reads as though it was written by a ninth-grader who saw an episode of Law & Order and learned just enough legal terms to throw them around incorrectly", stands out for its own reasons.
One point is to remember that Jay Sekulow is an attorney who made his fame playing word games in advancement of Christian supremacism. So let us be clear about, say, the Gay Fray and other right-wing culture wars: They were always like that; there is always something fundamentally amiss about these arguments, and the desperation of just wanting to get their way has increased significantly over the years. But that manner of balbutive is part of Sekulow's notoriety.
Cipiollone, a longtime Republican who worked for Attorney General Barr in 1992-93, is not unfamiliar with such rhetoric, and recently sent a letter to Congress on behalf of President Trump in which he asserted the House has no authority to conduct an impeachment inquiry. As Benen notes of Cipollone:
One of the few things the legal defense team was willing to put in writing was a strange, eight-page screed in October—it was, oddly enough, longer than the document it submitted over the weekend—that even some conservatives described as "bananas" and a "barely-lawyered temper tantrum."
Yes really. In October, Benen↱ observed:
The full text of the eight-page letter is online here (pdf), and even by the standards of Trump World, this one's a doozy. I'm a little surprised a White House counsel agreed to put his name on it, since it's likely to do lasting harm to Cipollone's reputation as a legal professional.
Indeed, it's difficult to see the letter as even presenting a legal argument. In practice, it's as if the president threw a tantrum; the White House legal team jotted down some of his poorly articulated rage; and shameless Republican attorneys tried to put a legal-ish veneer on Trump's rant.
Gregg Nunziata, who served as legal counsel and a senior policy adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), described Cipollone's letter as "bananas" and a "barely-lawyered temper tantrum." Nunziata added that "no member of Congress," regardless of party or ideology, "should accept it" ....
.... Reactions from the legal community were brutal. George Conway wrote, "I cannot fathom how any self-respecting member of the bar could affix his name to this letter. It's pure hackery, and it disgraces the profession." Former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal called the White House's letter "inane," adding, "You don't get to block impeachment just because you don't like it." Law professor Ryan Goodman, former special counsel at the Pentagon, described Cipollone's letter as "a professional embarrassment."
It is also worth pointing out the bit about a conference call with reporters, in which, "a senior administration official argued that before officials on Team Trump would agree to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, the president and his aides would require a 'full halt' to the process." That is to say, "after Congress stops the impeachment inqui
And I have been strung up naked in a jail cell against my own will. After being struck in the head.
