Standards for Impeachment
I look at a number of legal blogs from time to time because they are largely conservative in the viewpoints given. This one is rather detailed, timely and against Herr Groper.
LawFareBlog
Suppose a president refuses to accept extensive evidence, validated by executive-branch and congressional investigations, that a foreign power has engaged in aggressive subversion of the American electoral process. The actions include hacking into the files of political party organizations and attempts to penetrate the voter registration records maintained by state boards of elections. The intelligence community and Congress each report their conclusions that these attacks will continue.
The president aggressively questions these findings in communications with the American public, and he signals to the leader of the hostile foreign state that he will not join in the condemnation of these aggressive cyberattacks.
The president also fires the official in charge of the investigation into the Russian interventions and reassures representatives of this foreign state in person, in the Oval Office, that he thereby removed a source of “great pressure” on the relationship he wants with that nation. He then launches a series of virulent public attacks on the special counsel who is subsequently appointed to investigate the full extent of this electoral intervention and any collusion that may have taken place with U.S. citizens or organizations.
The president reports that in their direct discussions, the foreign leader denied the well-documented intervention. He then meets with the leader of a foreign power at an internationally televised summit and raises no objection or question when his counterpart repeats the denial. Instead, stressing that the foreign leader “feels strongly” about the falseness of the accusations, he suggests that he sees no reason to accept the findings of American intelligence officials rather than the foreign leader’s denials. The president then reiterates that the inquiry into the electoral interventions is “ridiculous” and a “disaster for the country.” On the eve of this meeting, he had delivered this same message to the American public in a tweet.
The argument that a president is not subject to impeachment for this pattern of conduct is hard to fathom.
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