Friday, December 20, 2019

Impeachment 2

It looks very much like Trump will be the very first US president to be Impeached but not acquitted. This does not mean he'll be found guilty: the Republicans in the Senate all appear that, like all the Republicans in the House, they will vote to acquit, and, knowing this, and not wanting Trump to be able to say he was acquitted, the Impeachment will not be given to the Senate, and the Senate cannot vote on the Articles of Impeachment until they are given them by the House. The House has passed two Articles, so Trump is impeached, but if the Articles are not formally handed to the Senate, they cannot try Trump and acquit him, and that's what Speaker Pelosi seems to have decided is best.
This impeachment is different from the two times the Congress considered impeachment in the 20th century. First, there was a burglary of the Democratic National Convention Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in 1972 that was ordered by the Committee to Reelect the President, or CREEP as it was called. The burglary was reported then ignored in '72, but then the US discovered that Nixon might have ordered the burglary, or might have found out it was CREEP that ordered and paid for it and then failed to report the people responsible for hiring the actual burglars, and this led to an Impeachment Investigation by the House. They discovered that Nixon taped every single word said in the Oval Office, and demanded the tape. Nixon refused, and took the Congressional subpoena to court. He was ordered to hand the tape over, appealed, and it finally ended up in the Supreme Court who ordered Nixon to hand the tape over, so he did. Sort of. 18 minutes were missing.
Eventually, a group of Republicans went to meet with Nixon, told him they could not vote against Impeachment and Conviction, and suggested it would be best to resign, and Nixon did.
In 1998, the intern Lewinsky had saved a blue dress she'd worn when she had sex with Clinton, who had said, under oath, that he had never had sex with her. The House Impeached Clinton just before the '98 Congressional election, and the Republicans lost heavily in that election, which is unusual, because it is usually the party in the White House that loses seats in the mid-term Congressional elections.  After the election, the Senate held a trial where a large majority of the Senators voted that Clinton was innocent as a new-born babe. Some say that, when he denied having sex with Lewinsky, he did it in such a way that it was not technically perjury. Other say that a gentleman never talks about what he has or has not done with a lady, so it is never perjury for a man to deny having had sex.with a woman.
In Nixon's case, everyone knew he was accused of being an accomplice to a burglary, and both Democrats and Republicans were ready to Impeach and convict. In Clinton's case, everyone agreed he'd had sex with Lewinsky and denied it under oath, but all the Democrat and many Republican Senators agreed that was not an offence.
In Trump's case, Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on anything, not what the charges are, not if they are Impeachable offences, nothing.
And the net result is that Trump will be the first president who was Impeached but not Acquitted!

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