The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives made history when it impeached President Donald Trump twice during his single term in office – once in the 116th Congress, and then at the start of the 117th Congress, a week before the end of Mr. Trump’s term. The first impeachment, in December 2019, charged Mr. Trump with:
Article 1: “Abuse of Power,” based on allegations that he solicited Ukrainian authorities to influence the 2020 presidential election; and
Article 2: “Obstruction of Congress” during House-members’ investigations into details of the first article.
Both impeachments ran almost entirely along partisan lines. In the House, only Democrats voted “for” on both articles, while all Republicans and three Democrats voted “against.”
Senate voting also followed party lines, with all Democrats voting “guilty” on both articles. Senator Romney (R-UT) voted “guilty” on the first article, but only Republicans voted “not guilty” on both articles. Votes of 48-52 (for conviction) on the first article and 47-53 on the second article did not reach the 67-33 majority required to remove the president from office.
The second impeachment of Mr. Trump was brought by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives on January 13, 2021 – a week before the end of his term. A single article charging him with “Incitement of Insurrection” was based on allegations (but no actual proof) that he incited the January 6th invasion of the U. S. Capitol. All Democrat Representatives and ten Republicans voted to approve the article.
In the Senate, 50 Democrats and 7 Republicans voted “guilty” on February 13, 2021 – 3 weeks after Mr. Trump left office. That Senate-vote was also insufficient to convict Mr. Trump.
In earlier writings I have commented on the Constitution’s protocols1 for impeaching and removing the president from office. In those comments I called Impeachment a “useless instrument,” since political alignments will almost always make obtaining enough votes for conviction by the Senate impossible, even when serious charges are involved. In the past, some lesser officials have been impeached and convicted, but none of the three impeached presidents was convicted and removed from office.
Of course, the high bar of a 2/3 Senate majority-vote for conviction also protects presidents from removal on merely partisan grounds. Had a simple Senate majority-vote for conviction been required, all three impeached presidents would have been removed from office.2
In the 234-year span of our Constitutional government, no president has been subjected to organized persecution after leaving office. After Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, his political enemies seemed poised to pursue and possibly prosecute him, but President Ford stopped such moves by granting Mr. Nixon a “…full, free, and absolute pardon…for all offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed…”3 Democrats never forgave Mr. Ford for depriving them of the chance to dance on Mr. Nixon’s grave.
But (as they say) that was then and this is now. Today, a year and a half after Mr. Trump’s departure, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives is conducting a jihad against the former president via televised hearings that ignore all conventional jurisprudential norms and conventions. The possible objectives of this ongoing campaign are:
- Generating enough treasonable “evidence” to fuel outright prosecution and eventual conviction of Mr. Trump by legal arms of the government;
- Smearing the former president so thoroughly that his re-election would be impossible.
- So enraging Mr. Trump that he will definitely run again in 2024.
Regarding the first objective, U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has recently said he is “open” to possibly prosecuting Mr. Trump for his role in the “January 6th insurrection.” And with respect to the second objective, House Democrats seem intent on carrying their televised Kangaroo Court on through the midterm elections in November. They obviously want their party’s candidates to run against “evil Trump” in those elections.
The third, more theoretical objective was suggested by writer and former Bush-43 official Tom Basile, in his recent article, “Who’s Afraid of Trump.”4 He argues that Democrats have nothing positive to offer voters, and “desperately” want Mr. Trump to run again because they believe they can beat him on style-points alone, as they (apparently) did with Joe Biden in 2020. He backs up his theory with statistics showing 64% of voters don’t want Mr. Trump to run again – including 68% of independents and 27% of Republicans.
Mr. Basile has a point about Mr. Trump’s brash, unpopular style, but it’s not the only point to be made. The issue for 2024 is whether voters can be persuaded to forget the terrible mess Democrats have made of the economy, immigration, crime, etc., and choose another unknown Democrat for president – all because voters hate Donald Trump’s style. Really? Color me doubtful on that.
Whatever the objectives, is all this really happening? Old guys like Yours Truly, and possibly some younger folks, are watching these proceedings with shock and amazement. The operative questions are:
- Can an ex-president be prosecuted for actions he took while in office?
- If so, why hasn’t it been done before?
- Can it be stopped now?
- If not, what will the long-term effects be?
(1) The Constitution is a rather small, readily available document, written in simple prose that even a middle-school child can understand. I don’t claim to be a Constitutional scholar, but I have read through the text more than once to remind me of its contents. In it I can find no reference to how an ex-president may be (or must be) treated. Evidently he becomes fair game for any who might wish to do him harm, after he leaves office.
(2) If that is true, then why has no previous ex-president been hounded, prosecuted, and convicted for “high crimes and misdemeanors” which he might have committed while in office? Is it because all 44 previous presidents were pure as the driven snow, while Donald Trump was (and is) uniquely wicked? Call me cynical, but I doubt all that. Yes, Mr. Trump was a disruptive political opponent for Democrats, but really…
The more accurate explanation would be a two-centuries-old “gentleman’s agreement” which directed politicians of both parties to let bygones be bygone, with respect to ex-presidents, so responsible officials and the public’s elected representatives could move ahead with the country’s business. Obviously, not every president has been an exemplar of moral rectitude, but once each of the previous 44 left office, that “agreement” indicated that it was time to move on.
(3) That gentleman’s agreement, however, is no longer operative. A significant political bloc either knows nothing about the agreement, or else is willing to trash it in a headlong rush to destroy their mortal enemy, Donald Trump. This is a very dangerous disruption of the peaceful transferal of political power, as ordered by voters’ election-choices.
Can the move against Donald Trump be stopped? Maybe. But stopping a disruption of governmental conventions is always difficult because of the surprise-factor. Evidently, no Republicans saw the post-White House Get Trump campaign coming. We – The People – might want to stop it, but only limited governmental instruments are available to us, within the boundaries of law. Forming a plan and putting an effective operation in motion will take time. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s enemies are monster-mashing onward to destroy him, politically and financially.
(4) What will the long-term effect be if these societal disruptions continue? We have withstood disruptions before – including a real Civil War, with real guns and bullets. Although the wounds were deep, we recovered enough to gain 20th-century Great Power status on the world stage.
In 2020 we dealt with the COVID pandemic, country-wide race-riots (called “mostly peaceful” by leftist media), and irregularities which cast doubt on election-results. We’ll probably recover from these disruptions eventually, but we’re still feeling their effects.
But the persecution (and possible prosecution) of ex-president Trump, if given free rein, will establish a destructive new model for the country. From now on, every ex-president will be hounded and prosecuted for “crimes” that his enemies will claim he committed while in office. He can expect to have his business harassed, his finances ruined, and his family defamed by years of litigation and adverse publicity. It will amount to indirect destruction of the Executive Branch.
Democrats will try to claim that piling on Mr. Trump was just a necessary, one-time “cleansing of the Augean Stables.” But that dodge won’t work. Eventually, even attorneys-general of states and cities will feel empowered to gain fame by going after ex-presidents. Who will stop them? And with such post-regnum persecution normalized, who will want to serve? (Does Good Old Joe realize that he’ll be next in line for the rack, the whipping post and the stocks?)
“I looked on my right hand, but there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me: no man cared for my soul.” (Psalm 142:4)
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- House procedures found in Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution; Senate procedures found in Article I, Section 3, Clause 6.
- Past conviction-votes in the Senate on impeachment articles:
Johnson (1868): 35-19 (one vote short of conviction)
Clinton (1998): 55-45 on jury-tampering article
Trump (2021): 57-43
3. See full text of Mr. Ford’s pardon message at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-4311-granting-pardon-richard-nixon
4. See Mr. Basile’s full article at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/29/whos-afraid-of-donald-trump/
28 comments
Today’s Republican Party is a dangerous brew of freaks, wierdos, fascists, Nazis, gunnuts, Confederates, biblethumpers and assorted ash and trash.
I long for the day when the strangest Republican candidate was that woman from Delaware who had to assure everyone “I’m not a witch!!” Those were the good ol’ days.
And you are an america hater. And you clearly does clearly describe the leadership of your party with freaks, weirdos, fascists and Nazis (ANTIFA). As far as the other insults, you hate people who love the constitution and embrace American history. If you live in America, you are the useful idiot to advance the interests of tyranny.
The Republican Party started their descent into Fascism 30 years ago. It did not start with Trump and will not end with him.
https://clearandpresentdanger.org/republicans-are-the-clear-and-present-danger-to-our-constitutional-democratic-republic/the-republican-party-has-been-heading-into-fascism-for-30-years-and-finally-they-are-there/
Clear and present danger has less credibility than infowars. It is an opinion hate site.
30 years ago, George Bush introduced the New World Order concept. It has been a horror but it was increasingly embraced by subsequent Presidents of both parties until Trump asserted MAGA. The Biden administration is full global socialist who is starting wars to distract from the evils of global socialism
The Republican Party is now full-blown Fascist; Nazism is the next stop.
https://clearandpresentdanger.org/republicans-are-the-clear-and-present-danger-to-our-constitutional-democratic-republic/the-republican-party-is-going-full-blown-fascist/
Explain the election theft in Arizona you useful idiot. Kari Lake is being denied the opportunity to campaign because you America haters know she will win.
I guess you missed the facts that (1) Kari Lake campaigned all over the state, and, (2) she won.
Check the comment timeline.
If you turned off Fox and spent your time searching real news outlets, you wouldn’t embarrass yourself by saying stupid shit.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/08/04/arizona-primary-2022-live-election-news-updates/10231884002/
The trouble with people who don’t study history is that they don’t learn from it. The fascisti had their philosophical roots in European Marxism. They were socialists as were the members of the National Socialist German Workers Party. You have far more in common with socialists, who believe in state power, than with those of us who believe in individual rights.
Most of the trolls are ideologues who ignore history – or worse want to destroy its lessons.
Meanwhile, in the Alex Jones trial — Jones’ attorney inadvertently turned over to the prosecution the entire contents of Jones’ cell phone, including a mountain of texts showing Jones’ involvement in planning for the Jan 6 coup attempt. More interesting, however, is the extent to which Jones’ texts show coordination between and among Jones and other rightwing purveyors of lies . . . Fox, OAN, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, Pajamas Media, Epoch Times . . . .
https://clearandpresentdanger.org/republicans-are-the-clear-and-present-danger-to-our-constitutional-democratic-republic/the-republican-party-is-the-party-of-lies-lies-and-more-lies/
Unconfirmed reports from sources claiming to have seen some of the Jones texts claim that Jones’ phone also had a generous quantity of child porn.
The Republican Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Goldwater has descended into a miasma of lies piled upon lies piled upon more lies, spread by a network of liars and child molesters.
You do not understand discovery. Also, Jones clearly has a lawsuit against his attorneys because they compromise his defense. The result is clearly an attack on free speech – my guess is you deny that Muslims celebrated the attack on the twin towers. Should you be sued by a 9/11 survivor family?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/
The Star-Ledger reported that as the rumors spread, “Paterson police rushed to South Main Street, the center of the city’s Middle Eastern community.”
“When we got there, they were all in prayer,” Paterson Police Chief Lawrence Spagnola said.
Since Colonial times there has been a division within the whites of the South — a geographic division that is also a cultural, educational, and political division. The division is between low-country whites and the hill farmer whites.
Low country whites include the planters (plantation owners who were the wealthy class), merchants and manufacturers, and small professional class (doctors, lawyers, bankers). They were generally well-educated; the planters and professional class sent the sons to Ivy League schools, or, at least to state universities.
The hill country whites were hard-scrabble dirt farmers; illiterate or semi-literate; clannish; violent.
In the late 1930’s, Jonathan Daniels, the brilliant young Southern liberal who was editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, set out on a journey through the South to “discover the South”. He published his observations in the book A Southerner Discovers the South.
Daniels wrote these words that predicted today’s Republican Party:
“In the cotton counties along the river in Mississippi, where there are three black skins for every white one, the gentlemen are afraid. But not of the Negroes. Indeed, the gentlemen and the Negroes are afraid together. They are fearful of the rednecks . . . who in politics and in person are pressing down upon the rich, flat Delta from the hard, eroded hills. They may lynch a Negro; they may destroy the last of a civilization which has great vices and great virtues, beauty and strength, responsibility beside arrogance, and a preserving honesty beside a destructive self-indulgence.” —Jonathan Daniels, A Southerner Discovers the South (1938)
This excerpt from Daniels’ 1938 book mirrors, in a way, what happened to the Republican party. While Daniels overly romanticizes the southern aristocracy’s virtues, the GOP’s degradation beginning with the influx of segregationists exiled from the Democratic party bears an eerie symmetry.
The Tea Party revolution was merely the last step in destruction of the Eisenhower Republican party by the forces of racial resentment, religious extremism and ignorance – abetted by plutocracy cloaked in the smoke and mirrors of “trickle down” economics
Now, the entire party has reached the predictable result, ruled by an dangerous idiot it dares not cross. They can only try to cheat to stave off the inevitable reckoning as the majority of Americans recoil from their creature and them.
You don’t understand that there are northerners. You are so consumed by hatred that you ignore the totality of politics.
Let’s see who is old and out of touch.
https://clearandpresentdanger.org/who-is-old/
Trump was too trusting of republicans who, rather than aid our president, worked against him. They are all an embarrassment in my eyes. When he finally was able to determine who his friends were, it was late into his presidency, although it is to his credit that he had many achievements in spite of all the knives in his back (see cartoon above).
Mr. Trump is a natural leader with good instincts. I assume this New Yorker was shocked at the treatment he had to endure. I doubt he would have been as “brash” if he had been treated fairly from his fellow republicans. How would you have responded?
If you spend too much time in the swamp, you become compromised. Thus Trump’s choices were limited, particularly in the beginning. At this point, most swamprepublicans have become RINOs simply be association. The few actual conservative republicans are constantlyb harassed and those who don’t conform ridiculed.
So should you fake jd martin
no such thing as smearing trump. He is despicable and should be in prison
Biden and his son should be in jail for corruption…
Biden and family have committed provable crimes yet the DOJ is strangely MIA.
how come? Corrupt DOJ? Idiot………..
Trump “despicable”? Says who? Who’s definition? What fake “facts”?
And somehow Biden can steal the election, flood the country with illegals, destroy the economy and energy sector, force citizens to take an experimental drug, pay for his son’s drugs and hookers all while being on the CCP payroll.
Biden and the democrats have taken this country to the edge of Civil War II.
They will not be happy with what they have sown.
crazy, huh?