CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-One of the greatest fears of our Founding Fathers was unbridled passion.
That is why they based the nation on two principles: (1) individual inalienable rights and (2) a Republic. They wrote a constitution which expressly created a Republic to protect individual inalienable rights. Democracies often have short passions sweep through a nation, causing it to take disastrously foolish action.
The Founding Fathers Did Not Trust Pure Democracies
The fact that the U.S. Constitution creates a Republic followed from the knowledge that a democracy can trample to death the inalienable rights of individuals. When all decisions are based on what the voters decide, no individual is safe. Thus, the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to protect the people from themselves by reducing the role that elections played. As we see today with the impeachment process, passion -- not rational thought -- rules the day. The GOP says that the Dems are hyper-emotional in their desire to get rid of Trump and the Dems believe that the GOP is hysterical in its support of the worst president in world history.
Impeachment was devised to be an “anti-democratic” means to remove a President. “Anti-democratic” means the people do not directly vote. Rather, it is a special process in which the House and Senate look at the President’s behavior in detail – in far more detail than ever happens in an election.
Impeachment Is Similar to but Not the Same as a Criminal Trial
Impeachment starts the way criminal trials begin. The President engages in behavior which a significant number of Representatives in the House believe constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors.” This weird term is legalese much like “malice aforethought” or “wanton and reckless conduct.” “High crimes and misdemeanors” is a term which 99% of people do not understand. Even attorneys must consult law professors and read older cases going back to the 1700s to figure out what the term means. That, however, is how the rule of law operates. People slow down, look at legal precedent, gather all the facts and interview all the witnesses. Then people think long and hard; they do not emote.
The Impeachment Process was Designed to Remove Emotionalism Which We Find in Elections
When people vote, they often have no well-thought-out reason to vote for a particular candidate. They may vote because he is cute, or because she seems nice; others vote because of the political party. There is no law that requires people to be logical, have any facts, or be sane when they vote. A vote can be based on pure misguided emotionalism arising from outrageous lies.
Impeachment Has Definite Steps
Like a criminal trial, Step #1 for impeachment begins with the authorities gathering of evidence. The House has private sessions where they interview potential witnesses and review private documents like phone records. Some call these behind-closed-doors interviews “depositions.” All law enforcement agencies have the initial private phase of private fact gathering. At this stage, the House may find out that all the claims are bogus and end the process right there. This happens in criminal cases where the police declare a “person of interest” to have been cleared, or it can happen later when the police go to the District Attorney who looks at the evidence and says, “There is not enough evidence to proceed to a preliminary hearing.”
As anyone who has watched 20/20 or 48 Hours knows, the police sometimes remain stuck at this level for years and during that time, they do not disclose their evidence. They may leak some information; they will definitely keep certain significant facts secret. If the prosecutor says, “Yes, there is enough evidence,” then and only then do they move to the public stage.
Step #2 Public Gathering of Evidence
This step is where the public gets to watch the witnesses and gets to see the written evidence, such as emails, letters, phone logs, tape recordings, etc. Step #2 is similar to a preliminary hearing in a criminal trial, but with impeachment Step #2 is the most important phase of the process. The public gathering of the facts through witness testimony under oath and from documents is far more important than the Senate trial.
As Prof. Noah Feldman pointed out, impeachment is the constitutional process to handle “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Elections are NOT the place to protect the Constitution. Any person who closes down the impeachment fact gathering in favor of elections is trashing the U.S. Constitution.
In reality, the fact gathering in the House is the real guts of the impeachment process. The Founding Fathers did not foresee this exact development, but there should be no gainsaying that Madison and others wanted impeachment to be based on all the facts and all the witnesses to be brought out during the House fact gathering. For them, the full House would need to hear all the evidence before voting on articles of impeachment. No stone should be left unturned so that when the full House votes on articles of impeachment, every scintilla of evidence is made public.
While we cannot ask them, it defies logic that the Founding Fathers would have thought that the House should vote on articles of impeachment when the most important evidence and the most vital witnesses are absent. But that is exactly what Nancy Pelosi has done. She has concealed the most vital evidence for her own petty personal benefit: fundraising for the November 2020 elections.
How We the People Play a Role in Impeachment
Since the government’s legitimacy is based on the consent of the governed and the U.S. Constitution begins with “We the People,” the people must play a role in impeachment. Like the House members, We the People cannot make rational decisions when vital evidence has been withheld from us. While the House members are to use fact and rational thought, they realize that their constituency cannot be left in the dark. As long as the public is ignorant of all the facts, then their opinions are ill-informed emotionalism. Fact gathering in the House must be as complete as possible so that members of the House can interact with the voters based on openly known facts.
We are now hearing that not only moderate GOP members were telling Pelosi that the public must see more witnesses and all the emails, memos, and transcripts of phone calls. The moderate Dems were also telling Pelosi the same thing -- do not stop the flow of evidence.
The House hearings are where the public needs to hear from Pompeo, Bolton, Giuliani, Parnas and others. Remember, Pelosi had the subpoenas withdrawn. After the court ruled that Don McGahn had to obey his subpoena, the House should have immediately re-issued the subpoenas. We already had administration officials testify against Trump’s wishes. Once the federal court ruled in favor of the House Subpoena, more administration officials who wanted to testify had the legal cover to come to the House.
Pelosi Stopped All Fact Gathering
As Fox News was beginning to turn on Trump, along with some GOP members, we knew more witnesses would be willing to testify. It does not matter what Rudy Giuliani would say. It is gross prosecutorial misconduct to conceal relevant testimony. The only reason Pelosi called a halt to the fact gathering (way too soon) is that she knew more evidence could turn moderate GOP members against Trump and Trump would be Nixonized in Spring of 2020 if not before Xmas.
Impeachment and Elections Have their Own Tracks
The biggest falsehood is that the impeachment process must conclude because elections are approaching. That claim is more outrageously bogus than Trump’s saying he did not ask Ukrainian President Zelensky for a favor. The impeachment vote could be held a month after Trump is re-elected or four months after his re-election. Impeachment is a constitutional process and it is not be truncated to accommodate elections.
It is beyond mind boggling that the House stopped fact gathering. Pelosi has significantly advanced the nation towards a violent civil war based on her Group Rights agenda where emotionalism is supreme, and facts play no role.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
