By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay
Reminder and chronology of events:
U.S. Constitution:
- Article One of the U.S. Constitution gives the
House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment and the Senate the sole
power to try impeachments of officers of the U.S. federal government.
- The President, Vice President and all civil officers
of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high
crimes and misdemeanors. [Article II, Section 4.]
Impeachment:
-
The impeachment of Donald Trump, the 45th president of
the United States, occurred on December 18, 2019, when the House of
Representatives approved two articles of impeachment on charges
of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
-Articles of impeachment:
The first article charges Donald Trump with
abuse of power for withholding foreign aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the
government of Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging
Democratic rivals.
The second article charges Donald Trump with
obstruction of Congress for blocking testimony and refusing to provide
documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
-
On January 31, 2020, a Senate majority of 51 Republican Senators
voted against calling any witnesses for the impeachment trial of Donald
Trump.
-
On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, in a trial requiring a two-thirds
majority to convict the president, a Senate majority of 52 Republican Senators,
with the notable exception of Senator Mitt Romney, a former Mormon missionary,
voted against convicting Donald Trump.
The die is cast. —History will record that Republican
senators in the U.S. Senate used their majority to sabotage the impeachment trial
of Donald Trump and, in so doing, de
facto exonerated him of abuse of power and of obstruction of Congress.
History will undoubtedly record that the January 2020 Senate trial for
the impeachment of Donald Trump was not a “fair and impartial” trial, but was
exclusively a preset trial, along partisan lines. The obvious objective of the
Republican Senate majority, from the beginning, was clearly not to proceed with
a ‘fair trial’, but it was rather to exonerate by any means the accused. It was
done without giving the House of Representatives’ managers and lawyers a fair
chance to prove their accusations levied against Donald Trump by calling for
the depositions of knowledgeable witnesses and presenting incriminating
documents.
Indeed, Republican senators, under the leadership of Trump’s leading
enabler Sen. Mitch McConnell, have blocked all attempts to have important witnesses,
some of them with new damaging direct evidence against the accused, to testify.
All of this was done with an open and active collaboration between the Senate
Republican leadership and Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, notwithstanding the
oath that every senator had taken at the beginning to be “fair and impartial”.
For example, the Republican Senate majority inexplicably refused to hear
John Bolton, former Security
advisor to Donald Trump and author of a book in which he called Trump’s request
to the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponent, a “drug
deal”. Similarly, the Republican senators also refused to hear Mick Mulvaney, the acting Chief of
Staff to Donald Trump who confirmed that his boss did ask for a personal
political favor from the Ukrainian government in exchange for lifting a freeze
of foreign aid to that country.
In fact, the Republican Senate majority did not want to hear any witness
who had first-hand information on the numerous abuses of power, numerous instances
of corruption, and the numerous
obstructions made by the President to the American Congress, thus negating the
latter’s constitutional prerogatives.
Therefore, it can be said that there has not been even the appearance of
a genuine and fair trial to remove the current American president from office.
Indeed, a trial without key witnesses and without relevant documents,
especially dealing with important and crucial information about the case, can
be seen as a farce, as the Washington Post wrote in its editorial of
January 27, 2020, and a sham —in fact, a cover-up of the crimes
committed by a president of their own party.
Historians will undoubtedly stress the fact that this was the first
impeachment case in the history of the United States in which no witnesses and
no documents were permitted to be considered by the jury of senators.
Donald Trump vs. the Constitution and his
Republican Accomplices in the U.S. Senate
Every American president before taking office must take an inaugural
oath to “preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution”. In Mr. Trump’s case, he has de facto, through his actions and his pronouncements, rejected two basic principles of the U.S. Constitution, i.e. the separation of powers and the
existence of co-equal branches of government. He has also rejected the most
important principle of democracy, which stipulates that no citizen is above the law. In Mr. Trump’s case,
even if he took an oath to that effect, it
would seem obvious that he never had any intention to abide by the U.S.
Constitution, let alone to “preserve,
protect and defend” it!
The House of Representatives’
Articles of impeachment were well documented and well presented. That the
majority of Republican Senators dismissed them
out of hand without calling for known relevant witnesses and without asking for
incriminating documents, while relying on spurious
and bad-faith legal arguments, make them historical accomplices
of the accused president. They put their own political
fortunes ahead of their country’s interests in
protecting the letter and the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.
Indeed, if the current president or if any future
American president decides to flout the U.S. Constitution with impunity and
becomes unaccountable, the Republican senators who have refused to take
seriously the charges of impeachment of Donald Trump brought to them by the House
of Representatives, will have to be held responsible. Mind you, Donald Trump
can already be considered a rogue
American president. How low can he go and how far are the Republicans willing
to go down with him. That is the question.
Conclusion
Since the Republican Senators have not respected the oath that all
senators took to have a “fair and impartial” trial of impeachment, it will fall
upon the U.S. electorate to take that responsibility in November. It remains to
be seen if the Senate’s abdication of responsibility will be redressed or not
by the American people.
____________________________________________________________
International
economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is
the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, of
the book “The New American Empire”, and the
recent book, in French « La régression tranquille du Québec,
1980-2018 ».
Please
visit Dr. Tremblay’s site:
Posted, Wednesday,
February 5, 2020, at 4:30 pm
Email
to a friend:
http://rodriguetremblay100.blogspot.com/
Send
contact, comments or commercial reproduction requests to:
N.B.:
Comments may be published on our weblog, unless you request otherwise.
Please
register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles.
To
write to the author:
________________________________________________________
© 2020
by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay