That was kind of my point, Doctorow seems to have been talking about the push for impeachment now. I was saying you don’t have grounds and it would be illegitimate.
Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. If tomorrow the entire legislative branch woke up and decided Trump should be gone they could write up articles of impeachment, get 50% + 1 in the house, 2/3’ds in the senate, and he’d be gone.
It won’t happen, something major needs to happen for that political process to occur, but if it did happen it would be legal and Trump would be impeached.
What’s an emolument? Could Obama have been impeached by allowing his book to be sold to representatives of foreign governments?
Obviously there’s a massive difference in scale, but it’s still a political determination. Worse with the emoluments claim he said he was going to hang onto everything during the election. That doesn’t make the conduct unimpeachable, but it’s much harder to justify impeachment for behaviour he admitted to during the campaign.
From the wiki article: Since 1386, the English parliament had used the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” to describe one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery.[5] Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.
or
Benjamin Franklin asserted that the power of impeachment and removal was necessary for those times when the Executive “rendered himself obnoxious,”
If you want you could find multiple grounds for impeachment for any President. If you were forced to draw up articles on Trump tomorrow I’d forget the emoluments, the top three claims I’d push are:
He is negligent in upholding the duties and responsibilities of his office.
He has disobeyed Congress in refusing to implement the Russian sanction bill.
Emoluments.
There’d also be a pretty strong case for appointing incompetent and corrupt officials, however I don’t think that would fly since those officials got senate approval.
I’m not sure how Roberts would rule if there were 67 and Pence said “As President of the Senate I’m voting to acquit. The Demoncraps need at least one more Senator. Deus Vult!” All I know is that it would be horrible.
He might not want to step in during the middle of a term and be the lamest of ducks. Maybe Baby Jeezus would come to him in the night and whisper other instructions (or it might be the combination of cheese fondue and lobster salad he had for dinner).
I’m good with keeping him in if it means the hypocrisy of the Republican party is brought forth front and center and “reasonable” (I’m a progressive, but if a reasonable conservative steps ups that is a better candidate, i’d vote for them, but watch them like a hawk) people get voted into office. I certainly don’t want Pence. I’d like to see Drumph pushed into a corner to serve out the remainder of our sentence.
There’s a political element because of who adjudicates it. But there are legal standards, precidents, And rules for how and why to do it.
Imagine a different president. From party A, that has done nothing wrong. Party B comes to power in Congress. In large part they could not simply pass articles of impeachment stating “we don’t want to other party to control the White House while we control congress, And he has a dumb face”.
They could try. But then you’re into that whole constitutional crisis, rule of law thing. And provided everything works as it should the courts would stand as a check on that over reach by the legislative branch.
Something like that passing through. Protects, checks, And the ediface of law our government rests on bot holding up. Regardless of who they’re removing. Would be bad.
So yeah a purely political impeachment is possible. But so is the military rolling through the capital, removing elected officials and forcing us to start over.
My late brother in law was a Secret Service agent; before that, he was career US military. They don’t walk off the job. The mindset is that they do their jobs and follow orders, regardless of what they think of their protectee.
I think as it becomes more and more apparent that the president and his friends are guilty of actual treason, attitudes or laws may change.
If this motherfucker and his cronies get off free, I don’t think I’m going to be able to live in this country anymore. Frankly, given the direction he and Putin are going to drag things, it might just be best to find a place to lie low for the next 10 or 20 years until things settle down and the probable radiation dissipates.
Honestly, I would be frightened to death if Trump got impeached and we’re left with the Jesus Freak meets Race Bannon in charge. Seriously, I don’t think it’s good under Trump but it can be worse… MUCH WORSE.
What lots of us are hoping is that the realization is more. It wasn’t just him who was the vile fart. It was about 30% of the country feeding this guy rotten eggs for 6 months, just goading him to let the big one fly. We are not only vowing to get rid of the vile fart, but also make it so his vile fartlet conspirators are marginalized, too.
Which will be suspended 12-16 months prior to being held, due to “the dangers of voter fraud and the integrity of the ballot,” and the GOP will be all for it.
