Why It’s Not Too Early for Impeachment and Why This Time It Could Work
We have not had a good impeachment in a while and less than a month into the second Trump administration it’s time to consider it as a possibility.
Consider the world from the perspective of President Trump. Presumably, he cannot run for re-election so he has no fear of retribution from the voters. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the president cannot be held criminally responsible for most behavior related to his duties while in office. The House and Senate are controlled by Republicans who are willing to look the other way no matter the latest outrage coming from the White House. On Capitol Hill, the Republican side no longer has a sense of outrage. All those nerve endings are shot.
With that political and legal reality as background it is easy to see why President Trump thinks he is bullet proof and why he might use his current term to break every rule that has constrained previous presidents. There is no incentive to hold back even from attempting to extend his time in office for an indefinite period. What is anyone going to do about it? Sue him? He doesn’t care. He is willing to take his chances and stay in power while others debate the merits.
A brief reminder of why President Trump was impeached the first time. Specifically, he was caught using taxpayer funds approved by Congress to assist Ukraine, as leverage in a scheme to hurt his political opponent Joe Biden. He was using taxpayer funds to extort the Ukrainian president. This is a clear case of corruption and even then Republican Senator Mitt Romney said so when it came time for the Senate to render its verdict on the charges. As we know, Trump survived only to be impeached a second time for trying to prevent Biden from taking office.
Two weeks in to Trump II, the once again president has specifically re-visited both those crime scenes and he is exceedingly confident there will be no repercussions.
The Impeachment Bill of Particulars(A Running Tally)
- In one of his first moves, President Trump caused his budget office to issue an order halting the disbursement of all federal grants and loans. This is a usurpation of the power of Congress to decide how taxpayer dollars will be spent and where. This is the exact abuse of power Trump was accused of in his first impeachment.
- President Trump issued an executive order in an attempt to end the constitutionally protected concept of birthright citizenship. A federal judge immediately stopped the effort, but in so doing set up a court fight over the issue.
- President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,500 people accused — and in most cases convicted — as part of his effort to over-turn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
- After the pardons, President Trump led an effort to purge the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI of any attorney or agent involved in the investigation into his scheme to over-turn the election results.
- President Trump has given unlawful powers to Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform X and the car company Tesla, to rampage through the federal government, firing career employees and suggesting deep cuts to spending previously approved by Congress.
- President Trump has shown dangerous levels of incompetence by appointing wholly unqualified people to important cabinet positions and he has unleashed a reckless foreign policy that will increase the cost of living for Americans, put the nation’s economy at risk, and damage partnerships with other countries around the world.
President Trump has nothing to lose, but we have everything to lose if we allow his presidency to continue on this path.
In less than a month, President Trump can already be cited by anyone paying attention for multiple moving violations. Some of the violations are in direct opposition to the plain language of the Constitution and others are simply dangerous decisions that will hurt the country.
Impeachment is the only remedy, because the Justice Department has long operated under the flawed policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Impeachment is also a remedy because impeachment is a political matter and does not require the commission of a crime. All it requires is the sense of both the House and Senate that the president has committed an impeachable offense and he should be removed from office.
Although we haven’t heard from any members of Congress on this point in public yet, it is very likely that a few Democrats — and even a few Republicans — might be considering whether it’s possible that President Trump might at some point reach too far. I argue he has.
If President Trump is allowed to continue with his pursuit of absolute power, at what point does Congress become irrelevant? If laws passed by Congress don’t matter, if the power of Congress to determine policy and spending can be ignored, then why have a Congress at all? Why run for the House or the Senate?
President Trump has long believed the power of the presidency is absolute and he is using his electoral and legal immunity to prove his point. He is daring someone to stop him. Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much, but at some point they are likely to agree that they do have a role to play in the governing of the country. At some point, a run-a-way president may be able to convince a majority of the House that he should be impeached and two-thirds of the Senate that he should be convicted and removed from office. He has already given Congress the material it needs to start the process. It is up to members to decide when to start doing their job.
