By Dave Lindorff
A lot of pundit verbiage and Democratic Party internal debate as well is being wasted on the question of whether Trump could be convicted successfully in a Senate currently run by a lickspittle Republican majority afraid of their shadows and devoid of any concern for the fate of Constitutional government.
Let’s accept that the 2-plus Republicans among this bunch of gutless partisans that would have to join all or most of the 47 Democrats and independents in the Senate in order to convict Trump do not exist, even if they were to be shown a video of Trump plotting a military coup.
It would still be the duty of the House Judiciary, and of the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives, to fully investigate President Donald Trump’s impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors,” his ongoing violation of the Constitution’s emolument clause against profiteering from his high office, and his use of bribery/extortion on the president of the Ukraine in hopes of getting foreign support for his 2020 campaign for re-election, and to vote out of the Judiciary Committee and to approve in the House articles of impeachment for those constitutional crimes.
Why go through such an exercise in futility if there’s little or no hope of a Senate conviction?
Because the Congress is the only available government body that has the power to stop a power-crazed president from becoming a dictator.
And because even if Trump were to be prevented by other forces — whether the courts, the Congress, an assassin’s bullet or too many Big Macs and milkshakes — from wreaking further havoc on the American body politic, its society and its people, allowing him to carry on as a dictator, issuing power-grabbing executive orders, violating laws passed by the Congress, refusing subpoenas of his taxes or his subordinates, etc., not to mention launching military actions without any legal backing, his impeachment will establish a new baseline of acceptable/unacceptable presidential behavior and power for all future presidents.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made that case eloquently at the opening of the House Judiciary cum Impeachment Committee hearing, when she said, in authorizing the committee to launch its impeachment investigation, “The President’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution … The President abused his power for his own personal benefit … Our Democracy is what is at stake. The president leaves no choice but to act.”
Fine words from the Democratic representative from San Francisco, to be sure.
But where was Madam Speaker back in 2002-3? That’s when President George W. Bush and his consigliere Vice President Dick Cheney, with the support of Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, lied brazenly and repeatedly on the basis of fraudulent evidence, claiming that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program…
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, six-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to: https://thiscantbehappening.net/conviction-and-removal-arent-the-issue-its-impeachment-of-trump-that-is-essential/