Saturday, July 11, 2020

Clarify Impeachment

Nancy Pelosi was asked about President Trump's plan to commute Roger Stone's sentance and replied that she is looking into legislation that would forbid the President using his pardon power that way.  This is exactly the scenario I forsaw 2 years + ago.  
Simplistic legislation would probably fail a constitutional test. But there is a way to proceed that might succeed. There are two basis for this.
The house has "Sole Power of Impeachment"
That means not only does the house have the power to impeach executive & Judiciary members, but it has the power to write the rules of impeachment.  That means they can define the officers and offices involved, procedures, entry points and when and how a case should go to the Senate for trial.
Except In Cases of Impeachment
As I noted before, the President:
“shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
Thus the power to pardon is limited by impeachment.  So the House should be able to stop the President using his pardon power? But how.
Simply forbidding him won't work. He is not impeached at the moment because the case went to the Senate and they acquitted him.  SCOTUS would laugh such a law out the door.
Define the rules of impeachment
What congress needs to do is the opposite of what they have done in the past. The house needs to make impeachment part of its regular order, defining what can be impeached and setting up administrative bodies combining the powers of special prosecutors and Inspector Generals to police those infractions.
Open Impeachment
Essentially the house needs to have an open impeachment inquiry run by an inspector general under the supervision of a house Impeachment committee and define the terms under which individuals are part of an impeachment inquiry into the President and he cannot pardon them, or they are under the panels protection until it goes to trial in the Senate. It would function like a grand jury except legal products would become parts of censure resolutions & legislation.
Nancy can use Roberts 4 guidelines as input into defining impeachment legislation.






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