Posted on 08/21/2023 9:18:25 AM PDT by Macho MAGA Man
The National Constitutional Law Union, or NCLU, has published a legal theory that questions whether many of charges against President Trump, particularly those related to his claims about the 2000 election, are now moot – because he was not impeached and convicted by the U.S. Senate.
Given that he was impeached twice and not convicted in either case, this is something that could actually help consolidate and eliminate some of the bogus charges Trump now faces.
Published Aug. 14 and titled “Strategy Memorandum Against the Trump Indictments,” the report by Todd J. Aldinger, Esq., asks the question: “Could George Washington have been prosecuted if he took similar actions and if the relevant statutes existed while he was President?”
“If the answer is ‘no,’ then it is equally improper to prosecute Mr. Trump under these indictments, given that Bruen and Dobbs mandate that all constitutional provisions be applied in accordance with their fixed meaning in 1787-1789.”
Aldinger says the Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs and Bruen decisions allow for Trump and his lawyers to argue that all actions a president takes while in office must be considered legal unless the chief executive is successfully impeached and removed.
“His acquittals only strengthen this case,” said Gavin Wax, the executive director of the NCLU, adding that the legal theory was “articulated in a vacuum.”
Wax posted the theory to X, formerly Twitter, including a link to the 17-page legal memorandum. Wax called it “the best legal strategy” for Trump and suggested it will “set precedent to prevent this nonsense from happening again in the future.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
I think you point about the classified documents case is well taken.
Beyond that, given the dual sovereignty doctrine that provides an exception to a double jeopardy defense, I’m inclined to think that, even if this theory applied, it wouldn’t preclude the GA and NY indictments from going forward.
It’s definitely worth a shot, however,
If any of this lawfare against President Trump is allowed to stand then every Republican AG across the country needs to open up proceedings against Obama and Hillary and etc. and drag them into court and prosecute them over and over and over and over.
See how they like it when Alinsky’s rules get applied to them!
The problem with your suggestion is finding a judge to allow the lawsuit to go forward against them in the first place.
🤔
I must have missed those claims.
Since when have liberals listened to an “originalists” explanation of the Constitution?
I think its a totally valid theory. The president cannot be prosecuted in a court unless/until he is impeached in the Senate. Trump was acquitted in the Senate.
If SCOTUS does not rule that way, it would behoove Republicans to engage in tit for tat prosecutions of Democrats in deep red jurisdictions.
When Trump took material with him upon leaving office he did so as the President. HE WAS NOT yet a private citizen, so his status as the document-taking decider is firm, indelible.
To me this seems to fit with the history of such matters, recalling that Bill Clinton was exonerated under the Presidential Records Act, although he very casually and probably insecurely handled records after he left office.
If the Presidential Records Act is similarly applied to Trump then I believe that case is the most bogus of ALL the bogus cases against him. There are other problems with that case including a grand jury hearing the case in Wash. D.C. in the first place instead of in FL where the case arose.
It remains to be seen if the legal point about a Senate refusal to remove him from office after the House Impeachment is necessary to upend that charge.
Some pundits claim the documents case is the worst legal challenge Trump faces. I don’t see it. But these are strange times.
As if anyone involved in these prosecutions gives a flying fig about what's proper. {snort}
Step 2. The Trump DOJ charge everyone involved in this situation to stop Trump from the Presidency, again, be charged like the J6 defendants.
Step 3. Lock up all those defendants for 2 to 3 years with no hearings, like the J6 defendants.
This is a good start on day number two, day one is the take the oath....
I prefer the “is not” theory.
Telling people to march peacefully to the capitol IS NOT calling for an insurrection.
Continuing to work w/NARA on returns of records IS NOT mishandling classified info.
Asking officials to investigate an election IS NOT a RICO violation.
Getting a loan by providing a property valuation on something that has not actually sold and for which there was no requirement for appraisal, and then working to pay that loan back on its terms IS NOT fraud.
Another Gateway Pundit nonsensical article.
Right out of the gate, basic facts wrong - the Senate does not impeach - the House does that. The Senate holds the trial and decides whether to convict. Impeachment / Conviction in Congress also has nothing to do with litigation in the judicial branch. Impeachment / Conviction has to do with whether or not someone can maintain public office - not whether they can or will be prosecuted criminally.
Has anyone ever survived impeachment then separately convicted of (or even charged with) related crimes?
His acquittals only strengthen this case.
Sound like the real deal.
We will have to wait and see how many of the democrats lawyers go umm on long vacations.
I posted something similar on August 16:
-PJ
I believe that when the Framers put the clause into Article I Section 3:Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law....that they expected Presidents to be honorable people who became "fallen" during the term of their office, otherwise they would fault themselves (We the People) for putting them into office in the first place. The expectation would be that the rigors of the campaigns within the states to choose Electors to the Electoral College and the stature of the Electors within their own states would result in a President who was thought to be beyond reproach.To that end, I can see an argument that indictments of Presidents would be limited to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that resulted in impeachment, not everyday criminal acts. Even the modern Department of Justice acknowledges that allowing a President to be charged for crimes during his term would impede the President from carrying out his duties.
Once a President leaves office, he has become a national figure of the highest degree. There will be people who like the job he did, and there will be people who detest the job he did. Nevertheless, enough people in the country selected this person to become President specifically to do the job that risks having various segments of the population becoming displeased with the decisions made, while others will be pleased with outcomes in their favor.
I would like to see an argument that once leaving office, Presidents should enjoy a degree of immunity from retribution via the legal system intended to punish a President in ways that were not possible while the President was in office. I think the Constitution provides a good guide to this "Presidential Immunity" that former Presidents should only be indicted for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," and should enjoy immunity for all other lesser crimes.
"High Crimes" would, of course, include things like murder, income tax evasion, and illegal representation (e.g., foreign agents, etc.), but speech, assembly, petitioning for redress of grievances, private contracts, etc., should be off limits from political retribution via the courts.
Former Presidents cannot get a fair trial of any kind, anywhere, simply because of the job that the nation tasked them to do, and the enemies they may have made while doing it.
.
An impeachment proceeding is quite analagous to a deportation proceeding in court before a judge. It does not feature a jury, but does not violate due process because it is in no way a criminal trial subjecting the accused to any criminal penalty.
Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 730 (1893)
The proceeding before a United States judge, as provided for in section 6 of the act of 1892, is in no proper sense a trial and sentence for a crime or offence. It is simply the ascertainment, by appropriate and lawful means, of the fact whether the conditions exist upon which Congress has enacted that an alien of this class may remain within the country. The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime. It is not a banishment, in the sense in which that word is often applied to the expulsion of a citizen from his country by way of punishment. It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which the government of the nation, acting within its constitutional authority and through the proper departments, has determined that his continuing to reside here shall depend. He has not, therefore, been deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, and the provisions of the Constitution, securing the right of trial by jury, and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, and cruel and unusual punishments, have no application.
Charles L. Black, Jr., and Phillip Bobbit, Impeachment, A Handbook, New Edition, Yale University Press, 1974, 2018
Bobbitt at 119:
Unlike criminal proceedings, which are designed to treat all defendants alike regardless of their station, impeachment is not a criminal proceeding—that's why double jeopardy doesn't forbid the subsequent trial of an impeached official.
Charles L. Black, Jr. at 36:
Now this has been a long pull, but we have our hands on a good first approximation to a rational definition of an impeachable "high Crime or Misdemeanor." Omitting qualifications, and recognizing that the definition is only an approximation, I think we can say that "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," in the constitutional sense, ought to be held to be those offenses which are rather obviously wrong, whether or not "criminal," and which so seriously threaten the order of political society and to make pestilent and dangerous the continuance in power of their perpetrator. The fact that such an act is also criminal helps, even if it is not essential, because a general societal view of wrongness, and sometimes of seriousness, in such a case, publicly and authoritatively recorded.The phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" carries another connotation—that of distinctness of offense. It seems that a charge of high crime or high misdemeanor ought to be a charge of a definite act or acts, each of which in itself satisfies the above requirements, General lowness and shabbinessought not to be enough. The people take some chances when they elect a man to the presidency, and I think this is one of them.
While on the topic of the relations between criminality and impeachability, let me remind the reader that the president, like everybody else, is generally bound by the criminal law. If something the has done is both a crime and an impeachable offense, then, by express constitutional provision, he may, after removal, be tried again in the ordinary courts, and punished; this provision was put in to avoid any possible plea of "double jeopardy."
Who writes this drivel?
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