Impeach William Barr This Very Minute

by Mary Maxwell, PhD, LLB
Are you getting tired of sex? I am tired of sex. A lady is sung President Trump for defaming her by calling her a liar when she accused hm of having raped her in the 1990s (She was an adult, not a child). The world is in flames. I do not want to spend time writing about sex.

The editor of Veterans Today has just reported (on Tuesday evening, Sept 8, 2020) that US Attorney General William Barr has moved to change the defamation case against Trump to be a case against the US so that the DoJ can be Trump’s defender. This is completely unlawful.

I will go on the assumption that Veterans Today is accurate. If not, my little homily here will work anyway, except that I will owe Barr an apology. (Though, be assured I do not forgive him for his part in Iran Contra when he was Poppy Bush’s AG, circa 1988.)

Do you recall in the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton, that the US Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that there was no requirement to spare a sitting prez from the inconvenience or distraction of a lawsuit, by postponing it till he was out of office?

The correct thing to happen now is for the Congress to impeach Barr for acting so out of line as to protect a president from paying damages to a plaintiff in a civil suit. UNBELEIVABLE.

After Barr is gone, the next step is to bypass Trump quickly so we can advise the electoral college to pick someone else on Dec 14, 2020.

PLEASE HAVE A LOOK AT THESE TWO REPUBLICANS who have not lost their marbles – Thomas Massie, in the House, and Ben Sasse in the Senate. They are young and bold; either one could guide the ship of state.

Otherwise we’re set for a repeat of the 2017 Alabama senate race in which the Repubs insisted on claiming the innocence of Judge Roy Moore and thus handed the senate seat to a Democrat, Doug Jones. (I still think Moore may have been innocent, but for the Party’s sake he should have foregone the election. He should have voluntarily “stepped down.”)

Trump should be requested to step down. The lady in question said she was attacked by Trump in New York, in the fitting room of Bergdorf Goodman’s. There is no way to try that rape case; it is out of Statute of Limitations. But she is going for defamation, as he recently called her a liar.

I believe in party loyalty. But I do not believe in making “Repub Party loyalty” hand an election to the Dems, all wrapped up in shiny gift paper.

For the rest of this article I am going to re-run what I wrote at GumshoeNews.com on May 27, 2019. The name of that article was “Impeaching, Are We? Get Pence First” (when there was early talk of kicking Trump out). I did not have any case against Pence. Rather, I felt that he was not particularly the man to do the big job.

I am offering this retrospective article for voters to use as handy reference as to the various constitutional points relevant to the current situation – by which I mean the imminent Judge-Roy-Mooring of Donald Trump. Don’t let sex take over every aspect of our civic life, OK?

Here is the 2019 piece by Mary W Maxwell:

Donald Trump, age 72, has had the chance since January 21, 2017, to fix up the problem of lawlessness in the US government. That’s 857 days. He not only hasn’t fixed it up, he has made it worse. Should he be removed from office? Personally, I am dissatisfied with his record, and hope he will be removed in the non-dramatic way, by the voters replacing him at the next election.

If his removal is urgently needed before then (he’s got 20 more months in office), there are three ways to do it. One is impeachment, another is to pressure him to resign, and another is to indict him for crime. Note: treason is the only crime for which the punishment includes a prohibition on office holding. Per federal law:

18 USC 2381 “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

If Trump leaves office by any of the three above methods, Vice President Pence will immediately become president. Then Pence would be allowed to appoint his own vice president (as Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller in 1973). The US Constitution’s 25th amendment, ratified in 1967, says:

“Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the vice president, the President shall nominate a vice-president who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.”

Why Impeach Pence?

Recall that I do not recommend impeaching Trump – I’d rather the nation pressured him to be a good president. But if there is a huge impetus to use the impeachment method of ousting Trump, I think we must ensure, beforehand, that there is a good person holding the office of Vice President.

I’ll come back later to the question of impeaching Pence. If you are old enough, you may recall that when Richard Nixon was president and Spiro Agnew was vice-president there was a bumper sticker “Get Agnew first.”

What the US Constitution Says about Impeachment [Update: Think of this now as Barr's impeachment. All such appointees are impeachable]

As a rule, I think the constitutional provision for impeachment is wonderful. It’s what gives Congress supremacy over the Executive, exactly as the Founding Fathers intended. Congress is the People, thus it gives the People supremacy.

Article I, sec 2 of the Constitution says: The House of Representatives shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section 3 says: “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that purpose they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: and no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present.”

To give an example of the breakdown of each chamber’s authority: President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House – 228 representatives voted Yes on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and 221 on obstruction of justice. But when the Senate tried him, they did not quite have the two-thirds vote needed to convict. (The same happened to Andrew Johnson in 1868.)

I hear you asking What’s the role of the judiciary in this? None. The presence of the Chief Justice is a way of lending dignity to the proceeding. He has no say in what the Senate does. And the “accused” does not have any right of due process — impeachment does not require justice, it is political.

The Dems Want Trump Out

As I am a staunch Republican, and have twice run for Congress as a Republican, my friends may be surprised that I am not firmly opposing an impeachment of Trump. Some may think I should be “loyal.” I think party loyalty is a disaster. One should be loyal to one’s nation first. We don't have a Westminster system of government.

Granted, the fuss being made about Trump is party-ish. It is run by the media and is carried out by the Democrat Party. It has mainly focused on “the Mueller probe” and has to do with “Russian collusion.” ...

Recently, however the focus has switched to impeaching Trump for the crime of obstruction of justice. Now you’re talkin’! Presidents shouldn’t be committing crimes. It is proper for the people to hold their leaders to the law.

Logically, however, the reaction to a president committing illegal acts should be to indict him, not impeach him. ...

The DoJ – the Department of Jerks (and That’s Putting It Kindly)

I have read only today [that is, in May 2019] that the Department of Justice has ruled that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Excuse me. Wait a minute. Did someone say the DoJ “ruled”? Oh my. Bring back high school civics classes please. There is only one branch of the US federal government that can rule that this or that must be done.

It ain’t the executive. It ain’t the judiciary (though courts rule as to the disposition of a case that is before them). So, it must be the legislature.

Article I, section 8 of the Constitution famously lists 18 grants of power that the Framers (who were delegates from the 13 states) gave to Congress. These have to do with money, army, interstate commerce, etc. But the 18th one says:

“The Congress shall have Power… to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

In other words, if the president wishes to make an executive order that makes something legal or illegal, he has to get Congress to enact that law. As for the idea that a “Department of Justice” can rule that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the only word for that is “embarrassing.”

Nixon and Clinton Were Sitting Presidents

For the record, there have been two US Supreme Court decisions on the question of whether a sitting president is sitting pretty. In United States v Nixon (1974) the court ruled that President Richard Nixon could not rely on executive privilege to spare him from having to hand over the White House tapes. He then handed them over (to the DoJ of all people!).

In Jones v Clinton (1998), Paula Jones had sued the president for sexual harassment that occurred when he was governor of Arkansas. ... [blah blah, as I mentioned earlier]

In short, there is not the slightest constitutional basis to protect a president from lawsuit, and of course there could never, ever, ever be a protection of any person in the US from being accused of crime....

What Are the Responsibilities of a President?

Presidents have been treated as celebrities since the reign – and I do mean reign – of FDR. FDR, who was elected 4 times starting in 1932, gave fireside chats on radio. Starting with Kennedy’s presidency in 1961, TV has made a big thing of whoever occupies the White House. By the 21st century, the public may have come to believe that a president is omnipotent. But, no, his job is narrowly prescribed.

The role of the executive is laid out in Article II of the Constitution. It says he can make treaties, and appoint officers, with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the senate. He is commander in chief of the armed forces. He can pardon persons convicted of federal crime. He is to give information to Congress about the state of the nation. Most importantly:

Sec 1: “Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:— ‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’.”

Section 3 shows us who is the enforcer of law: “The president... shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Stuff That a President Can Be Impeached For

Article II, Sec. 4, says:

“The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The word “misdemeanors” indicates that anyone wanting to get the president out of office can succeed on the flimsiest charge. (A misdemeanor is a crime for which the punishment doesn’t include prison time.) If you catch the president jaywalking, you’ve got him. – provided a simple majority in the House will vote to impeach him and 2/3rds of the Senate will vote to convict.
But jaywalking is done in personal life. I hope Congress would only ever get involved in impeaching a president for offenses committed in his official role.

My Articles of Impeachment of Trump

I will write later about impeaching President Trump, which, to repeat, I do not favor doing. For the moment I will make up two examples of articles:

(My) Article I of Impeachment. In April, 2017, Trump launched an attack on innocent civilians in Syria.

Did I hear you say “He can do that, as president”? No, he cannot. He can strike an enemy if it is urgent for the defense of the US; otherwise the power to wage war belongs to Congress. (See my claim in Maxwell v Trump, that was improperly dismissed by the First Circuit Court in 2018.) Furthermore, he committed a war crime by hitting civilians. United States federal law at 18 USC 2441 says:

“(a)Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

(c)As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct— (1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party.”

(My) Article II of Impeachment. ... In 2018, Trump scandalized the world and American citizens by saying he would not permit the entry into the US of persons from 7 Muslim countries, even if they already held a green card of US Immigration. (Do we know what is written on the Statue of Liberty? “Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me…” It doesn’t say “If I approve of your religion.”)

(My) Article III of Impeachment of Trump

Donald Trump, as a candidate for president in 2016 said he would “Lock up Hillary Clinton” for her crimes such as regarding the Clinton Foundation. He then failed to indict her, scandalizing the whole world.

(I hear you saying, “Thank God, Mary shows her true Republican colors at last.” No! My complaint about Hillary has nothing to do with her being a Democrat. Her crimes are horrendous, starting with Haiti.)

I can think of plenty more articles of impeachment of Trump, but now to the matter at hand.

Impeachment of Pence [Reminder: this was penned in 2019]

I know some people will say I am being unfair to Pence. Please, Folks, get a grip. The Constitution does not want us to be “fair” when contemplating impeachment. It wants us to assert the rule of the People over office-holders who step out of line. If Pence has broken the rules, he wants to be kicked out. Nevertheless, I admittedly am only going for Pence in the sense of “Get Agnew first” -- as a political strategy. Are you with me?

Article I of (My) Impeachment of Vice President Pence. When asked by CNBC, “Is a military option on the table for Venezuela?” Pence replied “All options have been on the table for two years.”

Article II of Impeachment of Vice President Pence Pence. In the CNBC interview, Pence said (deceptively) that “We were the first to recognize Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela.”

Conclusion

Notice to US citizens. Are you ready for a new field of regime changes, a la Iraq and Libya, in which countless people died for no benefit to the US? An neat little impeachment of Pence would teach the current president and all future presidents that we do not subscribe to an American right to crush people all over the planet.

Get Pence first.

--end of Maxwell’s May 2019 GumshoeNews article

UPDATE. Today, September 8, 2020, was the primary election here in New Hampshire for all offices other than president. I was startled when they handed me the Republican ballot -- many of the available offices had no candidate. These items said “Write-in.” I was tempted to put my name in all of them. Anyway, this shows that the party does not reach out to recruit candidates. Why not?

Please, Folks, we aren’t hopelessly stuck with two lacklustre presidential “stars” who had the megabucks to get nominated. There are at least 16 million Americans eligible to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come January.

And there are 3 months left before the Electoral College meets in December 14, 2020 to choose both a prez and VP to take office in 2021.

Is there perhaps somebody up there, way up there, who wants to make sure we never get an intelligent, honest person to sing “Hail to the Chief” to?

The William Barr malfeasance needs to be dealt with immediately, before the “rape case” becomes the be-all and end-all of the media (with all the outside world mourning that the US has gone mental).

Trust me, fellow Republicans: Bergdorf Goodman-gate is not going to end pleasantly.