Did you watch it last night/
CLEARLY something was going on when Philbin called Alan’s ideas radical.
Schiff pounced and made the comment that Trump’s team seemed to be distancing themselves.
He was fired or quit.
I suspect Trump wasn’t happy with the way his Radical ideas were getting trounced and sidelined him to some extent..which then led him to quit.
Even going beyond that, a second level, the theory of abuse of power that they have alleged--put aside whether or not it is a crime, the thory of abuse of power that they have asserted is not something that conforms with the constitutional standard of high crimes and misdemeanors. It depends entirely on subjective intent, and it is subjective intent alone.As Professor Dershowitz explained, and as I have explained--and I don't mean in the more radical portion of his explanation of his theory, I mean just in terms of what is high crimes and misdemeanors. He explained that something that is based entirely on subjective intent is equivalent to maladministration. It is equivalent to exactly the standard that the Framers rejected because it is completely malleable. It doesn't define any real standard for an offense. It allows you to take any conduct that on its face is perfectly permissible, and on the basis of your projection of a disagreement with that conduct, a disagreement with the reasons for it to attribute a bad motive, to try to say there is a bad subjective motive for doing that and will make it impeachable, that doesn't conform to the constitutional standard.
Dershowitz doesn't know how to regulate his delivery so as to keep to the case at hand. he rambles and gets into more vague and general theories. This approach, finding a vague and general theory (unified theory of law) is troublesome, difficult, and destined to fail, to break down in some hypothetical case.
So while on his rambling, Dershowitz lays up that a literal crime must be committed, or some other absolute that (like all absolutes) fails to fit all hypos.
Schiff, as he always does (oops, there I go with an absolute), misrepresented Philbin's argument.
Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Senators, it has been a long couple of days, so let me be blunt about where I think we are. I think we all know what happened here. I think we all understand what the President did here. I don't think there is really much question at this point about why the military aid was withheld or why President Zelensky couldn't get in the door of the Oval Office. I don't think there is any confusion about why he wanted Joe Biden investigated or why he was pushing the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory. I don't think there is really much question about that. I don't think there is any question about what we could expect if and when John Bolton testifies, although the details of which we certainly don't know. I don't think there is really much question about that. But what is extraordinary is, although they can claim that this was a radical mistake or notion of Professor Dershowitz that they seem to be distancing themselves from right now, I guess they think they are accusing Dershowitz now of some maladministration in his argument of the defense--they are still embracing that idea.What they just told you admittedly in outline of A, B, and C, what they just told you is: accept everything the House said, accept the President withheld the military aid to coerce Ukraine into helping him cheat in the election, accept that these investigations are a sham, accept that he obstructed all subpoenas and witnesses, accept all of that. Too bad. There is nothing you can do. That is not impeachable.
His idea wasn’t radical. It was completely mischaracterized purposely. He split the narrow “quid pro quo” idea into an even more narrow three types of motives for a quid pro quo and expanded on the “for political benefits” idea. He then argued that you would have to make the case that he ONLY acted for political purposes. He said, since he thinks his re-election is in the national interest he can’t be seen as doing something for PURELY political benefits without benefiting the country. He concludes by saying that’s why impeachment based on dual motives is a bad idea and doesn’t actually make any sense. Nothing radical about it
I saw his testimony. What ratical ideas are you talking about?
I think Dershowitz had some trouble with the very small area of behavior where non-criminal behavior would be appropriately addressed by Impeachment. He acknowledged it at times, but other times skipped over it.
The woman on The View, though absurd in both her interpretation of his argument and in her further extrapolations, did hit an example of where an impeachment need not be an actual crime - though I think we can say the fraud of running for President and then *completely* disregarding its duties by moving to Moscow and playing golf all day every day is still crime-like (I have used this example for decades now, though the destination was Tahiti).
Dershowitz’s argument that the behavior has to be either criminal, or crimelike, at the level of Treason or Bribery. I think that it a perfectly good position.