PRESS BULLIES ATTACKED IMPEACHED PRESIDENT TRUMP
By David Arthur Walters
PRESS INDEPENDENT
28 January 2020
The attack by two so-called CNN bullies on revered impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz for his evolving theory of whether or not the reason for impeachment has to be a crime was shameful and should be roundly denounced by bar associations worldwide.
After all, the bias of a lawyer's sophistry must depend on whom he represents or favors at the time, so there are occasions when legal rationalization has to make the weaker argument appear to be the strongest and even make right seem wrong and vice versa. Wherefore it is meet that Mr. Dershowitz argued during the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton that no crime is required to impeach a President, but now that he is representing President Trump, a crime is indeed required. He could arrive at no other conclusion after revisiting academic tomes in dusty old law books.
His defense against the bullies, who had not attended Harvard let alone any law school, naturally seemed blatantly illogical to laymen unacquainted with the theory of dialecticians who insist that dialectics is perfectly logical. He might have proven himself a better advocate by maintaining a cool demeanor and saying, “That was then, this is now, and the law progresses with the progress of the people governed by it,” perhaps citing some of the greatest jurists who ever lived to pronounced on the common law forged by their colleagues over the centuries.
It is no wonder Mr. Dershowitz seems confused to black-and-white thinkers unable to transcend good and evil to get a grip on the evolution on the profitable practice of law. The subject of whether impeachment is tantamount to a criminal indictment is always argued during impeachment proceedings. Those who argue that it is not cannot help but use concepts common to criminal proceedings such as “crime,” “due process,” “trial,” “jury,” “court,” “conviction,” “judgment” and so on. And then they say that a crime is not a crime, a jury is not a jury, a trial is not a trial, a court is not a court, and that due process is not criminal process because it is merely political.
It would be against their best interest as professionals to say that indictable crimes against specific members of the public are by nature political because a harm to an individual is considered a harm to all hence considered an offense against the government, and that high crimes and misdemeanors are a species of crime against the body politic itself comprising all individuals.
The legislature legislates laws, but a law is not a law until applied by a judge. The impeachment process is a kind of judicial proceeding whereby the common law of impeachment evolves. In other words, an impeachable crime is what the High Court of Impeachment says it is, and that is subject to change along with other bodies of law according to the mores of society .
Yes, the common law does change over time, preferably at glacial speed so people believe they have something to depend on although nobody knows for sure what some judge will decide in a particular case, and that is a good thing for the profitable practice of law by sophisticated casuists who do their best to stretch the law over cases of which no two are identical. Impeachments are part of that case-by-case process, and, since they concern people in high places and are few in number today, the proceedings glaringly expose the rather illogical rationalizations of common law to naïve members of the public who believe written statutes protect them from the necessary interpretations of biased or prejudiced judges.
Impeachments were once brought by high authorities against great persons for high crimes or crimes against the sovereign whether nobles or commoners, but now the proceeding is limited to the impeachment of high officials themselves for high crimes and misdemeanors. Of course countless treatises, some at book length, have been written by cavilers about the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” A misdemeanor may mean a crime of less gravity than a felony, or a misdemeanor may merely be immoral behavior not expressly prohibited by criminal law. A criminal misdemeanor in one jurisdiction may be a felony subject to capital punishment in the other, and in another place or at another time all crimes have been punished equally according to draconian laws.
Again, an impeachable crime is what the high court of impeachment says it is. For instance, lying under oath about fellatio in the oval office while national security is being discussed on the phone with a congressman may or may not be a high crime or misdemeanor; the act itself might somehow endanger national security. Conspiring to break into your opponent’s political office and abusing your power to persecute political enemies may be another. And then removing a member of your cabinet against the will a law made by the dominant party in Congress might be a crime, but the odds are against it when many other members of your cabinet say the law is unconstitutional. What about soliciting a bribe from a foreign power in return for releasing illegally withheld funds to fight an inimical foreign power?
An elected corporate board of directors, by the way, may remove a chief executive for any reason whatsoever, but that would not do for the national political corporation as it is constituted. Members of the Constitutional Convention spoke of “neglect of duty,” “malpractice,” “maladministration,” but given the fact that the electorate can remove a president at the next election, they thought that the impeachable crime should be potentially fatal to the Republic and what it stood for, serious as indictable crimes such as “betraying his trust to foreign powers,” “malversation,” “corrupting electors,” “bribery,” “treason” and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.” “Corruption” is a key term, meaning more or less than impure. A corrupt and egotistical official betrays his trust, acts for his personal benefit contrary to the public interest.
Now the Resolution of the House of Representatives acting as a Grand Jury has impeached President Donald John Trump for 'Abuse of Power' and 'Obstruction of Congress.' The latter impeachable crime is similar to an indictable crime, obstruction of justice. It is only natural that someone would want to withhold incriminating evidence against him, is it not?
'Abuse of Power' is the heading for what might include more than one indictable crimes, but the grave accusation is that a corrupt President betrayed his trust for personal reasons by soliciting a bribe, the thing of value being defamatory information, true or false, about his political opponent in exchange for releasing illegally withheld money to Ukraine for its struggle against the perennial enemy of the United States, namely, Russia. And that impeachment is more than similar to behavior prohibited by 18 U.S. Code Section 201, Bribery of Public Officials and Witnesses, not to mention Treason because the U.S. is not a war with Russia.
In any event, impeachable offenses are what the high court of impeachment says they are, and those sayings reasoned upon are the common law of impeachable crimes as distinguished from indictable crimes. Of course the President is innocent until proven guilty. He would be the worst offender ever tried if proven guilty, and would probably be pardoned by his successor, Vice President Pence, who has said that God put him in that office for a reason. The President would be punished by removal from the office, which he takes inordinate pride in holding, as if it were a throne and he were a monarch, hence his punishment would be terribly consequential even if he were immune from punishment for the slew of indictable crimes presently being considered by prosecutors.
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