I think he might be Amos' grandfather... 
Posted on 11/15/2019 8:25:02 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman bizarrely claimed impeachment does not “center on” whether a president has taken illegal actions, sparring Thursday afternoon in a debate with Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak.
“Impeachment does not center on legal-illegal,” Akerman said during cross-examination with Pollak, who made the case against Democratic lawmakers’ ongoing impeachment inquiry targeting President Donald Trump. The “Great Impeachment Debate,” streamed by Mediaite and carried by SiriusXM, was moderated by Dan Abrams, ABC’s chief legal analyst and founder of Mediaite.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Full title. Watergate Prosecutor Fumbles in Debate with Joel Pollak: ‘Impeachment Does Not Center on Legal-Illegal
Who is the hell is Nick Akerman? Where are they digging up these watergate aholes from?
Never heard of Nick Akerman before. I wonder if he is related to Amos T. Akerman (Attorney General under President Grant).
So limpeachment (intended spelling) is all about “cuz hitlary isn’t president and it’s the orange mans fault”.
Good to know they’re just making s**t up as the clown show falls flat.
> “Impeachment does not center on legal-illegal” <
That is actually correct. Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one. Benjamin Franklin even once remarked that a president could be impeached just for being rude.
So you don’t need a crime to constitutionally impeach a president. But without a crime, the whole thing looks like a farce, something a banana republic would try.
He’s correct in a way. “High crimes and misdemeanors” was not defined by the founding fathers, and has never been defined by Congress, so there is no legal “red line” that has to be crossed to trigger impeachment. It’s a political process based on whatever the hell Congress wants to base it on.
I think he might be Amos' grandfather...
Ropes and lampposts are a political process, too...
> “High crimes and misdemeanors” was not defined by the founding fathers <
I was curious about that, so awhile back I looked it up. Evidently, in the language of the day a “high crime” was any misbehavior by a high official. So while treason would be a high crime, so would coming to work drunk.
Hey, I recently had a CA judge rule that illegal acts are not ‘wrongful’ in legal sense in a civil trial. I even supplied the reference to the dictionary I used.
Wow! Did he work with Hillary Clinton?
I think this sort of argument focuses on the word “misdemeanor” in the phrase “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Why would it be in there, when the phrase “High Crimes” would have been sufficient. One might explain that “misdemeanor” means “breach of public trust”.
The problem is that every elected official can be considered to have “breached the public trust” of those who voted against them. That couldn’t have been the Founders’ intent.
If it refers to a breach of public trust, it must mean that the person has become a disgrace to their office even to most of the people who originally voted for them. In other words, almost everyone now wants to throw the bum out, and right away. I don’t see how anyone can even pretend that that is remotely true in this case. “Because we really really hates him” is not grounds for impeachment. It would destroy the Republic, if it were so.
Right. This goes along with Hearsay is better than first hand evidence.
This is more proof the Democrats think their base are complete morons who will believe anything
He’s right.
Imagine a president were elected who immediately upon being sworn in moved to Fiji and never answered his phone.
There’s nothing illegal about moving to Fiji, or not answering the phone, but you would have to impeach him because he’s not a good president.
From the Mike Quigley School of legal ethics...
John Quincy Adams explained impeachment process because the president has almost unlimited executive power:
“The exercise of this more than dictatorial power is indeed controlled, first, by the participation of the Senate in the conclusion of treaties and appointments to office. Secondly, by the reservation of the discretionary power of the House of Representatives, to refuse the supplies necessary for the executive action. And thirdly, by the power reserved to the house to impeach the President for maladministration, and to the senate to try that impeachment, and sentence him to removal and to disqualification for official station for ever. These are great and salutary checks upon the abusive application of the granted power. But the power is not the less granted.”
“High crimes and misdemeanors” is obviously a reference to actual legally-defined _crimes_. I’m open to evidence that the Founding Fathers thought otherwise. Considering they were hand-writing the Constitution to fit on a very few sheets of paper, further details were presumably presumed unnecessary.
Yes, the House could theoretically vote for impeachment without enumerating the laws allegedly transgressed and referencing evidence reasonably suggesting transgression thereof, but doing so risks civil war.
Insofar as #14 has a point:
Impeachment can act as a safety valve for gross misconduct - NEVER to be conflated with not accepting the outcome of his election, and casting about for some overwrought pretext to thinly justify undoing the will of voters.
Trump is doing his job. The Left may not like what he’s doing, nor how, but he is in fact doing it and without gratuitous/horrific results (like moving to Fiji incommunicado).
Quibbling over some trumped-up third-hand blather construing normal international diplomacy as somehow horrible doesn’t count.
Trump just has to make sure he doesn’t mis-step. His tweets today about the Ambassador had best be wisely done.
So the term “high-crimes and misdemeanors” does not actually mean “high-crimes and misdemeanors”? That’s a new one. I guess it REALLY means “whatever we don’t like about the president or his policies.”
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