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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorge Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-conway-trump-is-a-cancer-on-the-presidency-congress-should-remove-him/2019/04/18/e75a13d8-6220-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html-snip-
The Constitution commands the president to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. It requires him to affirm that he will faithfully execute the Office of President and to promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the fiduciary obligations of the president.
Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiarys best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.
So too with a president. The Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. But the history and context of the phrase high Crimes and Misdemeanors makes clear that not every statutory crime is impeachable, and not every impeachable offense need be criminal. As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, assaults on the integrity of the processes of government count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.
And presidential attempts to abuse power by putting personal interests above the nations can surely be impeachable. The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate. But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.
-snip-
Trump tried to limit the scope of the investigation. He tried to discourage witnesses from cooperating with the government through suggestions of possible future pardons. He engaged in direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. A fair reading of the special counsels narrative is that the likely effect of these acts was to intimidate witnesses or to alter their testimony, with the result that the justice systems integrity [was] threatened. Page after page, act after act, Muellers report describes a relentless torrent of such obstructive activity by Trump.
-snip-
As for Trumps supposed defense that there was no underlying collusion crime, well, as the special counsel points out, its not a defense, even in a criminal prosecution. But its actually unhelpful in the comparison to Watergate. The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.
The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If thats not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.
White House counsel John Dean famously told Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing. What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.
Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.
The Constitution commands the president to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. It requires him to affirm that he will faithfully execute the Office of President and to promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the fiduciary obligations of the president.
Fiduciaries are people who hold legal obligations of trust, like a trustee of a trust. A trustee must act in the beneficiarys best interests and not his own. If the trustee fails to do that, the trustee can be removed, even if what the trustee has done is not a crime.
So too with a president. The Constitution provides for impeachment and removal from office for Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. But the history and context of the phrase high Crimes and Misdemeanors makes clear that not every statutory crime is impeachable, and not every impeachable offense need be criminal. As Charles L. Black Jr. put it in a seminal pamphlet on impeachment in 1974, assaults on the integrity of the processes of government count as impeachable, even if they are not criminal.
And presidential attempts to abuse power by putting personal interests above the nations can surely be impeachable. The president may have the raw constitutional power to, say, squelch an investigation or to pardon a close associate. But if he does so not to serve the public interest, but to serve his own, he surely could be removed from office, even if he has not committed a criminal act.
-snip-
Trump tried to limit the scope of the investigation. He tried to discourage witnesses from cooperating with the government through suggestions of possible future pardons. He engaged in direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony. A fair reading of the special counsels narrative is that the likely effect of these acts was to intimidate witnesses or to alter their testimony, with the result that the justice systems integrity [was] threatened. Page after page, act after act, Muellers report describes a relentless torrent of such obstructive activity by Trump.
-snip-
As for Trumps supposed defense that there was no underlying collusion crime, well, as the special counsel points out, its not a defense, even in a criminal prosecution. But its actually unhelpful in the comparison to Watergate. The underlying crime in Watergate was a clumsy, third-rate burglary in an election campaign that turned out to be a landslide.
The investigation that Trump tried to interfere with here, to protect his own personal interests, was in significant part an investigation of how a hostile foreign power interfered with our democracy. If thats not putting personal interests above a presidential duty to the nation, nothing is.
White House counsel John Dean famously told Nixon that there was a cancer within the presidency and that it was growing. What the Mueller report disturbingly shows, with crystal clarity, is that today there is a cancer in the presidency: President Donald J. Trump.
Congress now bears the solemn constitutional duty to excise that cancer without delay.
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George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him. (Original Post)
highplainsdem
Apr 2019
OP
That would only work (for the best) if the metastatic growths are also eradicated.
Solly Mack
Apr 2019
#3
hlthe2b
(102,282 posts)1. I hope he's updated his rabies shots before heading home...
highplainsdem
(48,987 posts)7. LOL!
Funtatlaguy
(10,877 posts)2. Sleeping outside permanently.
Gore1FL
(21,132 posts)8. Maybe one of them likes it rough and this is just foreplay. nt
Solly Mack
(90,767 posts)3. That would only work (for the best) if the metastatic growths are also eradicated.
Secondary malignant growths survive if only the primary site of cancer is excised. Cancer remains even if the primary (Trump) is cut out.
The courts - judges placed by Trump, for one example - can be considered secondary malignant growths.
highplainsdem
(48,987 posts)4. Michelle Goldberg: Mr. @KellyannePolls is right
tanyev
(42,559 posts)5. I guess George didn't apologize to Kellyanne today.
WhiteTara
(29,716 posts)6. He's a Federalist and they're trying to protect
their turf. It's a gang war at the highest levels.
spanone
(135,838 posts)9. trump is a cancer on the world.