{"id":95063,"date":"2020-02-05T14:29:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T22:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=95063"},"modified":"2020-02-05T14:41:19","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T22:41:19","slug":"senate-votes-to-acquit-president-trump-largely-along-party-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=95063","title":{"rendered":"Senate Votes to Acquit President Trump Largely Along Party Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;President Trump was Acquitted along party lines today.  The only defection on either side was Senator Romney vote for impeachment on one of the articles.  The following is from McConnell on End of Impeachment Trial before the votes: \u201cThe Senate Must Do What We Were Created To Do\u201d  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the Senate Impeachment Trial:  \u2018These past weeks, the Senate has grappled with as grave a subject as we ever consider: A request from a majority in the House of Representatives to remove the president.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"ls_embed_1580941563\" src=\"https:\/\/livestream.com\/accounts\/300260\/events\/8885103\/videos\/201574946\/player?width=640&#038;height=360&#038;enableInfo=true&#038;defaultDrawer=&#038;autoPlay=true&#038;mute=false\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"ls_embed_1580942036\" src=\"https:\/\/livestream.com\/accounts\/300260\/events\/8885103\/videos\/201569492\/player?width=640&#038;height=360&#038;enableInfo=true&#038;defaultDrawer=&#038;autoPlay=true&#038;mute=false\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Framers took impeachment extremely seriously. But they harbored no illusions that these trials would always begin for the right reasons. Alexander Hamilton warned that \u201cthe demon of faction\u201d would \u201cextend his sceptre\u201d over the House of Representatives \u201cat certain seasons.\u201d He warned that \u201can intemperate or designing majority in the House\u201d might misuse impeachment as a weapon of ordinary politics rather than an emergency tool of last resort.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Framers knew impeachments might begin with overheated passions and short-term factionalism. But they knew those things could not get the final say. So they placed the ultimate judgment not in the fractious lower chamber, but in the sober and stable Senate.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018They wanted impeachment trials to be fair to both sides. They wanted them to be timely, avoiding the \u201cprocrastinated determination of the charges.\u201d They wanted us to take a deep breath and decide which outcome would reflect the facts, protect our institutions, and advance the common good.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018They called the Senate, quote, \u201cthe most fit depositary of this important trust.\u201d  Tomorrow, we will know whether that trust was well placed.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Here was reporting in April of 2016: \u201cDonald Trump isn\u2019t even the Republican nominee yet\u2026 [but] \u2018Impeachment\u2019 is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump\u2019s inauguration: \u201cThe campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced. This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged \u201cHigh Crimes and Misdemeanors\u201d included things like being impolite to the press and to professional athletes.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid. No, Washington Democrats\u2019 position on this President has been clear for years.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Their position was obvious when they openly rooted for the Mueller investigation to tear our country apart and were disappointed when the facts proved otherwise. It was obvious when they sought to impeach this President over and over.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s their real position: Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a \u201cHigh Crime or Misdemeanor\u201d the moment he defeated Secretary Clinton in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018That is the original sin of this presidency: That he won and they lost.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Ever since, the nation has suffered through a grinding campaign against our norms and institutions from the same people who keep shouting that our norms and institutions need defending.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018A campaign to degrade our democracy and delegitimize our elections from the same people who shout that confidence in our democracy must be paramount.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We have watched a major American political party adopt the following absurd proposition: We think this president is a bull in a china shop, so we\u2019re going to drive a bulldozer through the china shop to get rid of him.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018This fever led to the most rushed, least fair, and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The House inquiry into President Nixon spanned many months.  The special prosecutors\u2019 investigation added many more months. With President Clinton, the independent counsel worked for years. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018It takes time to find facts. It takes time to litigate executive privilege, which happened in both those investigations. Litigating privilege questions is a normal step that investigators of both parties understood was their responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But this time \u2014 no lengthy investigation. No serious inquiry. The House abandoned its own subpoenas. They had an arbitrary political deadline to meet. They had to impeach by Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018So in December, House Democrats realized the Framers\u2019 nightmare. A purely partisan majority approved two articles of impeachment over bipartisan opposition. And after the Speaker of the House delayed for a month in a futile effort to dictate Senate process to Senators, the articles finally arrived here in the Senate.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Over the course of this trial, Senators have heard sworn video testimony from 13 witnesses over 193 video clips. We have entered more than 28,000 pages of documents into evidence, including 17 depositions. Members asked 180 questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018In contrast to the House proceedings, our trial gave both sides a fair platform. Our process tracked with the structure that Senators adopted for the Clinton trial 20 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Just as Democrats such as the current Democratic Leader and then-Senator Joseph Biden argued at length in 1999, we recognized that Senate traditions impose no obligation to hear new live witness testimony if it is not necessary to decide the case. The House Managers themselves said over and over that additional testimony was not necessary to prove their case. They claimed dozens of times that their existing case was \u201coverwhelming\u201d and \u201cincontrovertible.\u201d  That was the House Mangers saying their evidence was overwhelming and incontrovertible at the same time they were arguing for more witnesses.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018But in reality, both of the House\u2019s accusations are constitutionally incoherent.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The \u201cobstruction of Congress\u201d charge is absurd and dangerous. House Democrats argued that any time the Speaker invokes the House\u2019s \u201csole power of impeachment,\u201d the President must do whatever the House demands, no questions asked.  Invoking executive-branch privileges and immunities in response to House subpoenas becomes an impeachable offense itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Here\u2019s how Chairman Schiff put it back in October. Quote: \u201cAny action\u2026 that forces us to litigate, or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u2018That is nonsense. \u201cImpeachment\u201d is not some magical constitutional trump card that melts away the separations between the branches of government. The Framers did not leave the House a secret constitutional steamroller that everyone somehow overlooked for 230 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018When Congress subpoenas executive-branch officials with questions of privilege, the two sides either reach an accommodation or take to the courts.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018That is the way this works.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Can you imagine if the shoe were on the other foot?  How would Democrats and the press have responded if House Republicans had told President Obama, We don\u2019t want to litigate our subpoenas over Fast and Furious, so if you make us set foot in court, we\u2019ll just impeach you? <\/p>\n<p>\u2018Of course, that\u2019s not what happened. The Republican House litigated its subpoenas for years until they prevailed.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018So much for \u201cobstruction of Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018And the \u201cabuse of power\u201d charge is just as unpersuasive and dangerous. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018By passing that article, House Democrats gave into a temptation that every previous House has resisted. They impeached a president without even alleging a crime known to our laws.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I do not subscribe to the legal theory that impeachment requires a violation of a criminal statute. But there are powerful reasons why, for 230 years, every presidential impeachment did allege a criminal violation. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Framers explicitly rejected impeachment for \u201cmaladministration\u201d \u2014 a general charge under English law that basically encompassed bad management; a sort of general vote of no confidence. Except in the most extreme circumstances, except for acts that overwhelmingly shocked the national conscience, the Framers decided presidents must serve at the pleasure of the electorate and not the pleasure of House majorities.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018As Hamilton wrote, \u201cit is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018So House Democrats sailed into new and dangerous waters. The first impeachment unbound by the criminal law. Any House that felt it needed to take this radical step owed the country the most fair and painstaking process; the most rigorous investigation; the most bipartisan effort. Instead, we got the opposite. The exact opposite.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The House Managers argued that the President could not have been acting in the national interest because he acted inconsistently with their own conception of the national interest, a conception shared by some of the President\u2019s subordinates.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018This does not even approach a case for the first presidential removal in American history.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Such an act cannot rest alone on the exercise of a constitutional power, combined with concerns about whether the President\u2019s motivations were public or personal, and a disagreement over whether the exercise of the power was in the national interests.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Framers gave our nation an ultimate tool for evaluating a President\u2019s character and policy decisions. They\u2019re called elections.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018If Washington Democrats have a case to make against the President\u2019s re-election, they should go out and make it. Let them try to do what they failed to do three years ago and sell the American people on their vision for the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I can certainly see why, given President Trump\u2019s remarkable achievements over the past three years, Democrats might feel uneasy about defeating him at the ballot box. But they don\u2019t get to rip the choice away from the voters just because they\u2019re afraid they might lose again.<\/p>\n<p>They don\u2019t get to strike President Trump\u2019s name from the ballot just because, as one House Democrat put it, \u201cI\u2019m concerned that if we don\u2019t impeach [him], he will get re-elected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The impeachment power exists for a reason. It is no nullity. But invoking it on a partisan whim to settle three-year-old political scores does not honor the Framers\u2019 design. It insults the Framers\u2019 design.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Frankly, it is hard to believe that House Democrats ever really thought this reckless and precedent-breaking process would yield 67 votes to cross the Rubicon. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018Was their vision so clouded by partisanship that they really believed this would be anywhere near enough for the first presidential removal in American history?<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Or was success beside the point? Was this all an effort to hijack our institutions for a months-long political rally?<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Either way \u2014 \u201cthe demon of faction\u201d has been on full display. But now it is time for him to exit the stage. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018We have indeed witnessed an abuse of power: A grave abuse of power by just the kind of House majority the Framers warned us about.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018So tomorrow, the Senate must do what we were created to do. We have done our duty. We have considered all arguments. We have studied the \u201cmountain of evidence.\u201d And tomorrow, we will vote.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We must vote to reject the House\u2019s abuse of power. Vote to protect our institutions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the Framers\u2019 design to rubble.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I urge every one of our colleagues to cast the vote that the facts in evidence, the Constitution, and the common good clearly require.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Vote to acquit the President of these charges.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;President Trump was Acquitted along party lines today. The only defection on either side was Senator Romney vote for impeachment on one of the articles. The following is from McConnell on End of Impeachment Trial before the votes: \u201cThe Senate Must Do What We Were Created To Do\u201d U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Fullscreen-capture-252020-22708-PM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/95064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}