Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Yes, President Trump can (and deserves to be) Impeached for What He Did and Said

 Sand for your Oyster--Impeachment for Dangerous Rhetoric

For those who think Congress shouldn't be trying to impeach the President just for calling a mob to Washington and then encouraging them to march on Congress which was fulfilling its constitutional duties, here is Article 10 of the impeachment articles Congress passed in 1868 against the first President who was impeached--Andrew Johnson.

The bottom line is that Congress has the authority (and I think the duty) to impeach any president they find to be dangerous to the constitutional order. Trump's undermining of the public's belief in legitimate electoral processes, his attempt to get his Vice President to act against the Constitution, his attempt to threaten the officer of a state to change the election outcome, his intemperate rhetoric and calling a mob to come to Congress to build pressure against them fulfilling their constitutional duties all easily make the bar our Founders would have set for an impeachment.

 

ARTICLE 10. That said Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, unmindful of the high duties of his high office and the dignity and proprieties thereof, and of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches of the Government of the United States, designing and intending to set aside the rightful authorities and powers of Congress, did attempt to bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach, the Congress of the United States, and the several branches thereof, to impair and destroy the regard and respect of all the good people of the United States for the Congress and the legislative power thereof, which all officers of the government ought inviolably to preserve and maintain, and to excite the odium and resentment of all good people of the United States against Congress and the laws by it duly and constitutionally enacted; and in pursuance of his said design and intent, openly and publicly and before divers assemblages of citizens of the United States, convened in divers parts thereof, to meet and receive said Andrew Johnson as the Chief Magistrate of the United States, did, on the eighteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and on divers other days and times, as well before as afterwards, make and declare, with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces, as well against Congress as the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the cries, jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled in hearing, which are set forth in the several specifications hereinafter written, in substance and effect, that it to say: