I don’t know if President Donald J. Trump’s action while in office constitute “high crimes” for which he should be impeached and removed from office. And neither does anyone else.
What I do know is this: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailed at least 10 instances in which, in his expert legal opinion, the president obstructed, or attempted to obstruct, justice. Obstruction of justice is a felony - the same felony for which President Bill Clinton was impeached nearly 25 years ago.
We also know the president, both directly and through his representatives, has admitted calling upon foreign nations to investigate a political rival. Well-respected career diplomats and intelligence officers, who’ve served through several administrations, have provided sworn testimony that those requests, at least in the case of Ukraine, were tied to American aid packages.
The partisan wagons have begun circling their camps in earnest as the impeachment discussing intensifies in Washington. The president has termed the congressional inquiry as a “witch hunt,” and “lynching.” He’s gone so far as to label the impeachment inquiry as a “coup” while calling for “due process.”
First and foremost, impeachment is the due process when congress has reason to believe the president has committed a crime. It’s the only process allowed under the United States Constitution. Beginning an impeachment inquiry doesn’t require a full vote of the House of Representatives, it merely requires the decision of the chair of one of the congressional oversight committees to pursue an investigation.
The president, however, seems to be making an analogy to criminal proceedings in which a charged defendant is entitled to confront his accusers and to see the full array of evidence and witnesses against him. That criminal process doesn’t apply to impeachment proceedings, but let’s try to apply the same analogy to the process as now stands.
The impeachment inquiry, to continue the analogy, is liken unto the police investigation. There is a report that a crime has been committed, it now falls to the House committees charged with executive oversight to determine if a crime has been committed by the president. Such investigations in criminal proceedings do not generally involve the suspect, beyond questioning and possibly search warrants and subpoenas. If the president was truly interested in “due process,” as he claims, he would follow the process and provide the documents and witnesses being requested by congress through the legal process.
The impeachment itself, again using this analogy, is akin to formal charges being filed either by a prosecuting attorney or a grand jury. It doesn’t remove the president from office, it is a resolution indicating the House has reason to believe the president committed a crime for which he should be removed from office, which then refers the matter to the Senate.
The Senate is then constitutionally required to conduct a trial and then vote on the president’s guilt or innocence. A guilty vote in the Senate will remove the president from office, something that has never taken place in American history. Two presidents, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, have been impeached, but neither were convicted in the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before an impeachment vote could be taken in the House.
The question on the table now is not whether or not President Trump committed a crime. The question on the table now is whether or not sufficient evidence exists to investigate whether or not the president committed a crime. And while I don’t know the answer to the former, and neither does anyone else, I believe the answer to the latter is a resounding yes. Witness testimony, statements from administration officials, and the president’s own words and actions not only support, but constitutionally require, the House to investigate. As close as we’ll ever come to knowing how these events really transpired is to allow the inquiry to run its course and support the process and its results, despite our own beliefs and biases.
Make no mistake about it, the United States of America is on the cusp of, if not already deeply embroiled in, a constitutional crisis. The president has flat out refused to comply with congress in the performance of its constitutionally required duty to provide a check on the power of the executive branch.
The House must now take deliberate and decisive action, and they must do it with both diligence and as quickly as possible. They owe it to We The People, who they’ve sworn to serve, and the United States Constitution, which they’ve sworn to protect, to investigate this matter and to put it to bed, once and for all, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Bob Henline is
managing editor of
The Cordell Beacon.