Posted on 10/03/2018 11:47:25 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday said sitting officials can be impeached for prior criminal conduct, citing a recent legal precedent.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) made the remarks after he was asked at a Washington event at the Brookings Institution about whether a sitting president can be prosecuted for federal crimes that he or she committed before taking office.
Schiff pointed to a 2010 case in which the Senate voted to impeach Thomas Porteous Jr., who was a Louisiana federal district court judge at the time.
Schiff said the Senate convicted him on four articles of impeachment — articles he noted would be "relevant to modern times." The counts included one based purely on prior conduct and another for lying under oath during a Senate confirmation.
"On an overwhelming basis, the Senate convicted [him] on all those articles including those two," Schiff said. "We now by constitutional terms — in a country that rarely has impeachment trials — have a precedent that you can be impeached and removed from office both for prior crimes and for lying under oath," the California lawmaker added.
Schiff, who tried the Porteous impeachment case, emphasized that this particular notion of trying a sitting official for past criminal conduct is "not an open question," despite people claiming it is on television talk shows.
"This had me yelling me at the TV set, which I rarely do," he joked.
Porteous became the eighth federal judge to be impeached and removed from office in more than two decades.
The audience member who raised the question pointed to tax crimes as an example of prior conduct, a reference that comes one day after the The New York Times reported that President Trump had participated in "dubious" tax strategies in the 1990s.
The audience member also asked whether it would be possible to prosecute a sitting president for crimes that occurred after he is out of office in the event "he may pardon himself for those crimes."
Benjamin Wittes, co-founder of Brookings' Lawfare Blog, pointed out that many of these questions are contested.
"Whether the president can be indicted at all is a contested question. The application of a self-pardon is a contested question. And whether a president can be made answerable for pre-presidential conduct is itself a contested question," said Wittes, who was moderating the panel.
Despite Schiff's recent comments, Democrats have stayed away from talks of trying to impeach Trump.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has previously warned that Democrats could hurt their party's efforts to win seats during the November midterm elections if they pursue impeachment efforts against Trump.
“I don’t think we should be talking about impeachment. I’ve been very clear right from the start,” Pelosi said in April during a press briefing in the Capitol.
What criminal conduct would that be, Mr. Schitt?
Trump wasn’t a public official before 2017! What an idiot.
If ‘legal precedents’ were so casually overlooked and outright ignored for the Clintons and “O”, why would they matter NOW?
Man! What a Schiff-head.
The man gives boobs a bad name.
They really do want to push toward civil war.
I assume if dems are floating this it means they know they lost on Kavanaugh and need a way to motivate their base.
I’d like to think it could be Uranium deals?
Demoncrats are Rabid Rats
And they say Kavanaugh used to get Schiff-faced in college.
Look at the HOUSE today and this yurk.
Winning the election - he stole it from Hillary with Russian help.
I'm sure he's referring to the NYT article on President Trump's tax returns.
Pelosi is smart. She realizes the Rat bases won’t survive an Impeachment of Trump.
Don’t worry Adam, you’ll NEVER be in the majority again, so you’ll remain impotent.
If there was tax evasion in the 1980s, the failing NYT would have uncovered it.
Let the Democrats impeach Trump for the crime of being rich.
According to rules as the Democrats make them up, we should have recourse to remove this scoundrel from office even if he’s not out congressman.
OK...let’s look into the Clinton’s, Obama’s, et al...’k?
Well, then Mr. Schiff, it may be a useful exercise for you to recall just who is in control of your no doubt voluminous FBI file now.
Can we get the FBI to investigate this ass clown from, let’s say, about the time he was 5.
The House can impeach, and the Senate can remove from office, for whatever reasons they please. The courts would refuse to second guess the Congress, since it’s clearly a “political question.”
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