Dershowitz vs. Mueller , Legal vs. Political, Desperate Obstructionists

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Dershowitz vs. Mueller
 
The airwaves in the past 48 hours have been full of speculation about the impeachment of President Trump.  MSNBC scored its highest ratings ever Tuesday night because the left is convinced that Trump is on the verge of being impeached and frogmarched out of the White House. 
 
But impeached for what?  Being a populist conservative who defeated both major political establishments, the Bushes and the Clintons?  (See below for a short list of Trump's accomplishments.)
 
While some on the left are screaming about "high crimes and misdemeanors," the constitutional requirements for impeachment, others on the right question why Michael Cohen pled guilty to a campaign violation in the first place.
 
Even former Clinton pollster Mark Penn wants to know why no one is being investigated for the Steele dossier.  Millions of dollars were paid for obvious opposition research to benefit Hillary's campaign, yet that's not how any of those payments were reported.
 
In my view, the most reliable legal expert is Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.  He is a die-hard liberal, who donated to and voted for Hillary Clinton.  But he believes in the rule of law, and does not let his ideology distort his view of the law.
 
Last night, Professor Dershowitz was on Fox News with Bret Baier.  He demolished the left's arguments that Trump is guilty of violating campaign finance laws.  Here's what he said:
 
"It's not even a close question. . .  I challenge any of those who say it's a crime to find me anything in the criminal law that would make it a crime for a president personally or candidate personally to pay in order to save his own election.  It's just not against the law. . .
 
"Show me the statute.  There is no statute that would make that a crime. It might be a misdemeanor for the campaign to fail to report that payment but it would be on the campaign not on the candidate. . . To talk about this as a 'high crime and misdemeanor,' it's absurd."
 
You can watch the exchange here.  Read more of his analysis here.
 
 
 
Legal vs. Political
 
Now, that's the law.  But you need to understand this point:  Impeachment is not a legal process. 
 
It is a two-step political process conducted by Congress, and it only takes a simple majority vote of the House of Representatives to technically impeach the president.  (If two-thirds of the Senate votes to convict, then the president would be removed from office.)
 
As President Gerald Ford famously said, an impeachable offense is "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." 
 
And just to prove that point, let me remind you that a handful of House liberals already introduced five articles of impeachment against President Trump last year.  None of them have anything to do with campaign finance violations and only one is even remotely related to alleged Russian collusion. 
 
Two of them involve the president's criticism of "so-called judges" and his references to "fake news" as assaults on the judiciary and a free press! 
 
Seriously, my friends -- that is what some left-wing politicians are trying to impeach Trump for -- mocking the liberal media and liberal judges.
 
 
 
The Big Picture
 
Yesterday, I wrote about the "Big Picture," and I want to return to that theme today. 
Let me remind you of just a few things the Trump/Pence team has accomplished in the short time it has been in office: 

 
 
 Desperate Obstructionists
 
Senate liberals are doing everything they can to try to derail Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.  Some declared their opposition to Kavanaugh even before he was nominated.  Others have refused to even talk to him.
 
Even though Judge Kavanaugh has authored hundreds of opinions senators can scrutinize, some are demanding hundreds of thousands of documents that have nothing to do with his judicial philosophy.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is even threatening to sue to get these documents.
 
Now they have a new tactic.  Liberal senators are suggesting that Michael Cohen's guilty plea is evidence that Trump somehow stole the election.  Therefore, his court appointments are illegitimate. 
 
Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted, "The Senate must postpone Kavanaugh's hearings until the ongoing [Mueller] investigations are complete."  Well, who knows when that will be? 
 
Yesterday, Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor and declared Cohen's plea to be "a game changer."  He said:
 
"At the very least, the very least, it is unseemly for the president of the United States to be picking a Supreme Court justice who could soon be effectively a juror in a case involving the president himself."
 
Schumer then demanded that the Senate Judiciary Committee suspend plans for a scheduled confirmation hearing on September 4th. 
 
Senate Republicans appear to be holding fast.  Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) seemed receptive to Kavanaugh after their meeting this week, and he is meeting with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) today.