Posted on 08/24/2023 9:57:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
No, if a state prosecutor brought criminal charges, they would be held in abeyance until the president was either impeached and removed from office or until he left office at the end of his term. Nothing would prevent the charges from being prosecuted after the president left office. Nixon was never impeached, but Ford still needed to pardon him so he wouldn’t be prosecuted after he resigned. But impeachment and acquittal in the Senate just means the prosecutor has to wait until the end of his term to proceed, not that he can never file those charges.
That happened when we allowed the first non-elected (the 537 remember them?) to enact rules that citizens must live by. If it is not enacted by Congress, it is not a law.
“Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one.”
Impeachment is a legal process prescribed by the Constitution to address criminal acts — crimes and misdemeanors.
“Being acquitted in the Senate does not negate a criminal prosecution...”
The author states it does, since the Senate is converted into a courtroom during impeachment trial.
“...nor would a conviction require a criminal prosecution.”
That is as it always is, up to a the prosecuting attorney’s decision.
Please, no more posting from this author’s website. He lacks a fundamental understanding of the Constitution and US laws. AKA a fool
I recommend that Jack Smith maintain LIFELONG bodyguard details.
No, I must strongly disagree with your contention that is a “total nonsense”.
IMO, it’s a reasonable inference from the following portion of Article I, Section III:
“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.”
The argument is that there would have been no reason to specify that conviction by the Senate is not a bar to subsequent criminal prosectution if it did not matter for double jeopardy purposes whether the offical was convicted or not. That’s a pretty run-of-the-mill way to interpret this language and it is certainly far from nonsensical.
The DOJ OLC took the position in a 2000 Memorandum that acquittal by the Senate is not a bar to subsequent prosecution. However, that Memorandum acknowledged that “the argument has some force” (p. 114) and notes its “initial plausibility” (p. 118). Indeed, before reaching the opposite conclusion, the Memorandum lays out the argument in detail (pp. 114-118). https://www.justice.gov/file/19386/download You might well join the DOJ in rejecting the argument but to me it is far from nonsensical.
The Supreme Court has affirmed “the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits merely punishing twice.
Wonder why they aren’t speaking up about the inquisition?.
Stupid Republicans, all they have to do is defund the special Prosecutors
to end this Bovine excrement.
high crimes and misdemeanors
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