For John, BLUF: House Manager Adam Schiff said that the Election in 2020 will not be fair and will not reflect the will of the people. “The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won." Voting is no longer a way of selecting our leaders? FYI, the Lawfare Blog is out of Brookings Institution. Nothing to see here; just move along.
It continues:
"Abuse of power, for impeachment purposes, must consist in corruptly using those powers for personal, political gain. If the president in fact withheld military assistance authorized by Congress in order to gain an advantage over former Vice President Joe Biden, that was an unlawful and corrupt abuse of power. The fact that the GAO confirmed that this was a violation of law is not, as Dershowitz claims, irrelevant. And the claim that other presidents violated the same provisions—without a showing that they did so for personal, political reasons—has nothing to do with the question of impeachment. Of course, Trump’s defense team may well argue that the president never intended to connect his withholding of funds from Ukraine with the demand that the Ukrainian president announce an investigation of Biden and his son."
From "Alan Dershowitz’s Strange Constitutional Arguments on Impoundment and Foreign Policy" by Philip Bobbitt (Lawfare).
Here is Professor Althouse's comment:
If we take Bobbitt's approach to heart, everything depends on what Trump had in his mind. The question is whether the Senators have enough evidence of wrong thoughts in Trump's mind that they should deprive the people of the choice we made in the last election, when the alternative is to go forward to the next election. And I'm saying "we" even though I did not vote for Trump. We, the People.You're Darn Tootin'.
Hat tip to Ann Althouse.
Regards — Cliff
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