Tag Archives: impeachment

national news

The logic? Where is it?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Someone will have to explain this bit of logic to me.

Donald J. Trump’s legal team is preparing to argue at their client’s impeachment trial that the trial is unconstitutional. Why is that? Because you cannot “impeach a president” who is no longer in office.

That’s what I hear them preparing to say.

Except for this little factoid. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump on Jan. 13. He was still the president of the United States when the House impeached him.

Thus, and this is just little ol’ me, the impeachment is quite constitutional. Donald Trump had a week to go before he high-tailed it to Florida.

The Senate trial cannot remove him from office, which I guess factors into what Trump’s lawyers are thinking. However, and this is important, the Constitution does not specify that a president must still be in office during a trial.

Article I, Section 3 of the founding governing document notes that “judgment shall not extend further than to removal from office.” The founders did not say that removal was the only punishment; my reading of the constitutional text tells me that the punishment could not exceed removal. So … what’s the deal with that argument against conducting an impeachment trial of a former president?

If the Senate convicts Trump — and that is a huge mountain to scale, I know — then it could have a separate vote to bar Trump from ever seeking public office. The conviction bar is high, requiring a two-thirds vote; the ancillary vote requires only a simple majority of the Senate.

I know that I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar. I know what the Constitution says, though, and it tells me that a Senate trial meets the constitutional standard.

Impeachment is not the issue. The House delivered the goods while Trump was in office. The burden falls solely on the Senate to demand that Trump be held accountable for inciting the riot that damn near wrecked our democratic form of government.

national news, political news

Rep. Cheney ‘won’t bend’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I sure hope I don’t choke on these words, so I’ll take great care when I write them.

It is that I am proud of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., for standing on principle and not “bending” to the whims of partisan hacks.

Cheney has come under intense fire from Donald Trump’s core of lunatics who are angry at her because she voted on Jan. 13 to impeach their hero. The Wyoming Republican Party has censured her for her vote.

Rep. Cheney isn’t backing down. Not one bit!

She told “Fox News Sunday” this morning: “The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment, and it doesn’t bend to partisanship. It doesn’t bend to political pressure,” she added. “It’s the most important oath that we take, and so I will stand by that, and I will continue to fight for all of the issues that matter so much to us all across Wyoming.”

Cheney on Trump impeachment vote: ‘The oath that I took … doesn’t bend to partisanship’ | TheHill

How about that, ladies and gentlemen? She reveres the oath she took when she joined the House of Representatives. That oath compels her to protect the Constitution and the laws of the land. She did not swear any fealty to Donald Trump. She didn’t give him a pass for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection that well could have brought great physical harm to all 535 members of Congress … and the then-vice president, Mike Pence.

They were gathered on Capitol Hill to do their constitutional duty, which was to certify the results of an election that proclaimed President Joe Biden the winner over Donald Trump.

Cheney and the other GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump all have incurred the wrath of the Trumpkin Corps.

I mentioned “choking” on these words. It is because Liz Cheney is not my kind of politician. She is too right-wing for my taste. I would not vote for her if I lived in Wyoming.

However, I am addressing only her principled stand against the insurrection that Donald Trump incited with his angry rhetoric to the mob that stood before him.

It is amazing in the extreme that Rep. Cheney would have to defend her vote to defend the Constitution, but she did … and for that I am proud of her.

national news

Yes, Trump must be punished

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

You’ve heard it said, I am sure, that if Donald Trump didn’t commit an impeachable act on Jan. 6, then “what does constitute such an act?”

It is my considered belief that Trump’s incitement of an insurrection against a co-equal branch of government on that day, just two weeks before he was to exit the presidency, is the worst singular act that any president ever has committed.

The U.S. Senate this week is going to conduct its fourth presidential impeachment; Trump has been tried in two of them.

The first one occurred in 1868 when President Andrew Johnson stood trial for violating the Tenure of Office Act after he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without notifying the Senate; he escaped conviction by a single vote.

The next one occurred in 1999 when President Bill Clinton stood trial on a charge of perjury; he lied to a grand jury about an affair he was having with a White House intern. The perjury case was the basis of three impeachment articles. The Senate acquitted him on all three.

And then we had the first Trump impeachment trial in 2020. Trump was impeached for abuse of power and for obstruction of Congress based on a phone conversation he had with Ukraine’s president in which he asked the foreign head of state for political dirt on a rival … who happened by presidential candidate Joseph Biden. The Senate acquitted him on both counts.

Here we are today. What Trump did on Jan. 6 was provoke a mob of terrorists to march on the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results of a free and fair election. The riot on Capitol Hill killed five people. The terrorists were angry over the lie that Trump kept repeating that alleged “massive vote fraud” where none existed.

The rioters stormed into the very Senate chamber where 100 “jurors” are going to stand in judgment of the man who exhorted the rioters to do the damage they inflicted on our very democratic system of government.

Think for a moment about what might have occurred had the terrorists actually gotten their mitts onto Vice President Mike Pence — who they wanted to hang. Or had they found Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who they said they would execute.

This isn’t a close call, senators.

Yes, Trump is out of office, but the trial meets constitutional muster. He can be tried after being impeached one week before leaving office. Trump can be held accountable. He must be held to account for the hideous conduct he exhibited after the 2020 election.

national news

Outcome likely settled

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(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Many of us are waiting for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial to begin.

It’s not that I am expecting an epiphany of courage to result in a conviction. I am expecting another acquittal, although there might be enough Republican senators to cross into the conviction line to make somewhat interesting.

The House impeached Trump on a single count of incitement of insurrection. Goodness, the evidence is mountainous. It’s there for the all the world to see, and which it has seen already. He exhorted a riotous mob of terrorists to march on Capitol Hill; it did and you know what happened.

My strong hunch that no amount of testimony from the House managers presenting their case in the Senate is going to persuade any Republican senators to change their minds, getting them to convict instead of acquit Trump. I sense a few GOP senators are leaning to convict Trump; I am thinking of Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman (who announced he won’t seek another term), Susan Collins and maybe one or two others. That’s far short of the 17 GOP senators required to produce a conviction in a 50-50 Senate lineup.

Democrats likely will hold firm and convict Trump.

What might the House prosecutors aim to do if they realize that a conviction isn’t meant to occur? They’re going to speak to the rest of us watching from our living rooms. They well might decide to destroy whatever is left of Trump’s political credibility, seeking to deny him any footing on which he could launch another political campaign in 2024.

Senators are going to take an oath to be impartial. The oath, though, is a joke. To be fair, Democrats have made up their minds as well as have Republicans. As has been noted before, an impeachment trial in the Senate is a political event, not a judicial one.

That said, I would surely vote to convict Trump if I had a say in the outcome. Instead, I am left just to speculate from the peanut gallery along with the  rest of the nation.

My speculation at this moment leads me to believe that Trump won’t face any official sanction from the Senate. Still, it is clearly worth the effort that House prosecutors will exert as they lay out for the whole Earth the evidence we have seen that Donald John Trump is a scurrilous imposter who had no business masquerading as our nation’s president.

national news

Is this trial different? Yes … here’s why

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The men and women who will prosecute the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump have filed their legal brief in advance of that process.

It states, in part: “The Nation will indeed remember January 6, 2021 — and President Trump’s singular responsibility for that tragedy. It is impossible to imagine the events of January 6 occurring without President Trump creating a powder keg, striking a match, and then seeking personal advantage from the ensuing havoc.”

READ: House Impeachment Managers Outline Case Against Trump : NPR

My head and my heart are conflicting with each other as the nation prepares to witness this spectacle unfold. My heart desires a conviction, even though Donald Trump no longer is in office. He needs to be held accountable for inciting that horrifying riot.

My noggin tells me something different. It is that the House managers who will prosecute this case will be speaking to a “jury” that has made up its mind. Fifty Senate Democrats want to convict the former president; some of the 50 Republicans may join them, but not enough of them will cross that threshold to deliver a conviction.

The Constitution sets a high bar, requiring a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict a president.

So, why is this trial different from the first trial that acquitted him on abuse of power and obstruction of justice? It is different because the crime Trump committed on Jan. 6 had a direct impact on the jurors, the senators who will be sitting in judgment.

Trump incited the rioting mob to march on Capitol Hill. The terrorists did as he stated. They stormed into the Capitol Building, where senators and House members were meeting to certify the results of the 2020 election. Senators and House members were sent scurrying; they feared for their very lives!

How in the name of sanity does someone give a pass to someone who incited that kind of violence when it could have resulted in catastrophe for those who will pass judgment? You cannot!

Trump has assembled a new defense team; the first one quit because of differences with the client over trial strategy. The new team will argue that the Senate lacks standing to try a president who isn’t in office. This layman believes that argument is so much crap!

This trial should be dramatically different from the first one. If there exist enough Republican senators with a sense of moral outrage over what happened on the very floor where they will hear this case, then there well could be a vastly different outcome.

Sadly, I fear that the cowards among the GOP caucus are going to win the day.

national news

Will cowardice prevail?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The evidence, some circumstantial and some of it tangible, keeps piling up.

Donald Trump is looking more each day like someone who incited a coup d’ etat against the U.S. government.

His allies in both congressional chambers are now admitting to being duped into thinking Trump would concede the 2020 election if he lost. Then he actually lost it bigly to President Biden and he then challenged the outcome of the vote. He called it rigged; he trotted out phony vote fraud allegations.

McConnell: Trump Tricked Me Into Backing His Coup (nymag.com)

Then came the events of the Sixth of January. He exhorted the mob of terrorists/rioters to march on Capitol Hill and “take back” the government. The terrorists attacked with force.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump a week later. He now is preparing to stand trial in the Senate even though he no longer is in office.

The question keeps boiling up: Will the Senate Republican caucus muster up the guts to convict Trump of inciting an insurrection or will it hide behind the dubious defense that the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office?

I await the outcome with a keen eye and ear.

national news

Let’s clear this up

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Folks, we need to clear up a thing or three about the U.S. Senate trial that awaits us next week.

Donald Trump’s legal team is arguing that the trial is unconstitutional because a former president cannot be impeached. Hold on, ladies and gentlemen!

Donald Trump vacated the U.S. presidency on Jan. 20. The House of Representatives impeached him a week earlier, on Jan. 13. The impeachment occurred one week after Trump incited a riotous mob to storm Capitol Hill, seeking to prevent Congress from fulfilling its constitutional duty to certify that President Biden won the 2020 election.

House Democrats Make Case for Convicting Trump (msn.com)

Do you see where I’m going with this? Talk of impeaching a “former president” misses the mark by a Texas mile. The House did not impeach someone who had already left office; Trump was still in office when the House delivered the “yes” vote on impeachment.

So, let us remove impeachment from the discussion. It was done legally and constitutionally.

What’s at stake is the Senate trial, which is a separate quasi-legal/political function.

What does the Constitution say about that? It says that the Senate has the sole authority to put a president on trial. A conviction can result in no punishment greater than removal from office, the document notes; that means, as I read it, that it can convict a former president and can establish in a separate vote whether that individual should be barred from seeking public office in the future.

Let us cease conflating impeachment with the trial. The first event has happened. The second one will commence soon.

Uncategorized

Is it constitutional? Yes!

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald Trump’s Senate suck-ups are making what I believe is a specious argument about the constitutionality of a pending Senate trial of the former president of the United States.

Here is what the nation’s founding government document says about impeachment in Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to the law.

That in effect is the sum of what the Constitution lays out.

Trump is going to stand trial a second time. The Senate acquitted him the first time on multiple charges of abuse of power and coercing a foreign government. This time he is standing trial on a single charge that he incited an insurrection.

He left office on Jan. 20, meaning that he cannot be “removed” from an office he no longer occupies.

But let’s parse the language of what the founders wrote, OK?

They wrote that “judgment shall not extend further than to removal from Office.” The way I read that clause means that removal from office is the maximum punishment that a conviction that deliver. It doesn’t preclude any other judgment.

If one is to take an “originalist” view of the Constitution — acknowledging what the founders intended when they wrote it — then one could presume that the brilliant men who crafted the document would accept the idea of putting a former president on trial.

But … the suck-ups in the Senate are likely to stand firm in their cowardly attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump’s lunatic base of voters who would threaten them if they do the right thing.

national news

Trump team bales out?

(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Under normal, legal circumstances the decision by Donald Trump’s legal team to bale out of a pending defense of their client would have me clapping my hands.

As idiotic as the former president’s strategy reportedly is playing out, though, I am going to withhold any hope that there might be an actual conviction coming from the upcoming trial in the U.S. Senate.

Trump is getting ready to stand trial on a charge that he incited the insurrection that occurred on the Sixth of January. He did as has been accused. I saw it. You saw it. The world saw Trump whip the crowd into a frenzy before it marched on Capitol Hill. The House impeached him for it. The Senate will put him on trial even though he has left office.

Trump’s legal team exited the scene reportedly over a disagreement with its client on defense strategy. The lawyers wanted to defend Trump on the basis of a constitutional argument, that the impeachment trial doesn’t fit the Constitution’s provision for removal from office if a conviction is the result. I believe that’s a long shot legal argument.

But then we have Trump wanting the legal eagles to argue on the basis of The Big Lie, that there was widespread vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They declined. Then they walked. Who can blame them? Trump’s argument is moronic in the extreme.

So now Trump has no legal team to defend him against the House impeachment. Should he sweat it? No. Why? Because this isn’t strictly a legal trial being conducted in a court of law. The Senate is going to deliver, more than likely, a political verdict. Senators likely already have made up their mind. Heck, 45 GOP senators voted that the trial is unconstitutional, which suggests to me that the Senate is far from likely to convict, given that the Constitution calls for 67 senators to vote for it; a 50-50 Senate split requires 17 Republicans to make that call.

About the only thing the reporting of the lawyers bugging out tells me is that Trump is clinging to a ridiculous notion that has nothing to do with the issue at hand: Did he incite the terrorist mob to attack the Capitol with the intent of stopping Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election?

Umm. Yeah. He damn sure did!

Uncategorized

Get this trial done quickly

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden has gone on the record, saying he wants Donald Trump’s Senate trial done quickly, that there is no compelling need to drag this charade any longer than necessary.

I agree with him.

It’s probably no stretch to presume that Joe Biden shares the views of many millions of Americans who want the Senate to convict the former president, even though removal from office no longer is possible. I damn sure want him convicted. I also want the Senate to approve a provision that bans Trump from seeking public office ever again.

A 55-45 vote in the Senate the other day, though, likely spelled doom for a conviction. Only five GOP senators joined their Democratic colleagues in determining that the trial is constitutional.

Back to the president’s point about a speedy trial. Yes, I am weary of presidential impeachment talk, of the morass it creates. As for President Biden urging a swift outcome, it is because he has an aggressive COVID relief agenda he wants Congress to enact. He wants to get the legislative branch on the fast track to providing economic relief, not to mention getting the nation on the road to  full recovery from the killer pandemic.

A drawn-out impeachment trial would take senators’ eyes off the legislative prize.

Let’s get real for just a moment, too.

Gutlessness is alive in both houses of Congress. The 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump are facing the wrath of constituents back home. That electoral anger frightened other House members into doing what they likely know is right, that  Donald Trump incited a riot that could have resulted in many casualties than it did. Still, the House impeached Trump.

As for the trial, the Constitution requires two-thirds of senators to convict. The bar is high, as it should be. However, the cowardice that too many House members exhibited is showing itself in the Senate.

A second Senate acquittal of the corrupt, amoral and moronic former president now appears to be a fait accompli. There is no need, therefore, to drag this charade on.

What about Donald Trump’s political future? My strong hope is that he sealed it with his hideous post-election response, his fomenting of the Big Lie about widespread vote fraud that did not exist.

I stand with President Biden in wanting a quick end to this chapter. Then Congress can get to work seeking an end to the pandemic and rescuing a collapsing economy.