We have some guidance from our foundational law, the Constitution, which tells us how to proceed: the House of Representatives has "The sole power of impeachment," the Senate has "The sole power to try all impeachments," and must do so "On oath or affirmation." The Senate cannot convict "Without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present." And "When the president of the United States is tried, the chief justice shall preside."
Tellingly, during President Clinton's impeachment trial, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was asked to instruct senators, as judges uniformly instruct jurors, that in reaching a verdict they must consider only the evidence presented during the trial.
President Andrew Johnson was impeached on 11 charges, but tried on only three.
True, much media and political effort has gone into sometimes close and often willful parsing of President Trump's July 25 conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky -ironic when you consider Mr. Trump's well-known linguistic promiscuity-not to mention the celebrated whistleblower complaint, which contains no firsthand information.
It also contains the following morsel: "A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating."
Publicly available reports, including by Andrew McCarthy in his new book, "Ball of Collusion," suggest that during the 2016 campaign the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get evidence from Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump.
When you grope through the miasma of Slavic names and follow the daisy chain of related people and entities, it appears that Ukrainian officials who backed the Clinton campaign provided information that generated the investigation of Mr. Manafort-acts that one Ukrainian court has said violated Ukrainian law and "Led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-durhams-ukrainian-leads-11569786611
Tellingly, during President Clinton's impeachment trial, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was asked to instruct senators, as judges uniformly instruct jurors, that in reaching a verdict they must consider only the evidence presented during the trial.
President Andrew Johnson was impeached on 11 charges, but tried on only three.
True, much media and political effort has gone into sometimes close and often willful parsing of President Trump's July 25 conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky -ironic when you consider Mr. Trump's well-known linguistic promiscuity-not to mention the celebrated whistleblower complaint, which contains no firsthand information.
It also contains the following morsel: "A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating."
Publicly available reports, including by Andrew McCarthy in his new book, "Ball of Collusion," suggest that during the 2016 campaign the Federal Bureau of Investigation tried to get evidence from Ukrainian government officials against Mr. Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to pressure him into cooperating against Mr. Trump.
When you grope through the miasma of Slavic names and follow the daisy chain of related people and entities, it appears that Ukrainian officials who backed the Clinton campaign provided information that generated the investigation of Mr. Manafort-acts that one Ukrainian court has said violated Ukrainian law and "Led to interference in the electoral processes of the United States in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine as a state."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-durhams-ukrainian-leads-11569786611
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