Wow! Did he work with Hillary Clinton?
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?
> “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.
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...
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.”
Hey Nick yes it does you asshole!
That’s fine, he is admitting what is really at the center of most every U.S. Congressionel impeachment of a U.S. President - political motivations.
That is even true of Nixon. Had he wanted to he could have launched DOJ/FBI investigations into Democrat’s spying on his campaign, including moles, prostitues and undercover operations; and exposing the hypocrisy of the central complaint about the Watergate burglers - spying on the opposition. But Nixon didn’t do that; Nixon waa no Trump.
Why impeach Nixon? They had to. He was ending the Vietnam War and opening U.S.-China relations. They had to discredit and overshadow his landslide reelection (60.7% of popular vote, electoral college votes of 49 states) inspite of the Watergate claims. Carter would later win due to the Democrats tarninshing the GOP over Watergate. THAT - politics - was their objective.
The American people are not buying it again.
When everything you do makes your audience think that an illegal act(s) has occurred and must be punished you better have an illegal act(s) to offer up to your audience!