Monday, September 30, 2019

Senate Shouldn't Dignify Impeachment Parody With a Trial

Sen. Marsha Blackburn pointed out on the floor of the Senate last week that the Democrats began making plans for President Trump's impeachment well before he was inaugurated.

The House may choose to impeach or not, and one can imagine an argument that the Senate is just as free, in the exercise of its own "Sole power," to decline to try any impeachment that the House elects to vote.

The Senate could entertain a motion to dismiss the charges at the outset of a trial on the grounds that the allegations did not meet the constitutional standard of impeachable offenses, and a majority of the Senate could send the House packing without ever hearing a witness or seeing evidence.

If a majority of the senators thought the House was abusing the impeachment power there is no reason why the Senate would have to pay obeisance to the House by going through the motions of a pointless trial.

The respected legal scholars of Twitter pounded out countless retweets of an unsourced HuffPost article that claimed, "The Republican leadership issued a memo Saturday clarifying that the Senate must take action if the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump." No link to the memo was provided, of course.

Bloomberg found a "Republican Senate leadership aide" willing to cite a 1986 memo from then-Parliamentarian Robert Dove, who advised that "Both the rules and the precedents argue for a rapid disposition of any impeachment trial in the United States Senate." Oddly, no link was provided to this memo either.

If Democrats ever manage to produce articles of impeachment, the Senate shouldn't dignify them with a trial.

https://spectator.org/senate-shouldnt-dignify-impeachment-parody-with-a-trial/

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