Impeachment Just Got Closer, But at the Expense of the People

Monday, May 29, 2017
By Paul Martin

Seth Ferris
Journal-Neo.org
28.05.2017

Nowadays all we hear is the “I” word – Impeachment. Donald Trump is going to be removed from office through being impeached, i.e. charged with, and then tried by, Congress for crimes he has allegedly committed. There has been talk of this since before he took office, and it would be a major surprise if it didn’t happen.

Trump won the election by being an outsider, much like Jimmy Carter once did in the wake of Watergate, but he is too far outside for his own Republican Party, let alone the Democrats. These forces have always sought an excuse to get rid of him, but Trump has provided them with plenty, treating the rest of the country’s elected representatives with contempt, as if only he has a mandate and that mandate is to get rid of them, not the other way round.

Professor Robert Reich, admittedly a Democrat, reckons there are already four grounds on which to impeach Trump, with a fifth about to happen .

All the grounds given are indeed “High Crimes and Misdemeanours” as defined by the US Constitution. Trump must have been aware of his predicament, but blusters on committing more crimes on the grounds that he is somehow above reality, a trait very characteristic of political leaders and big businessmen, but not ultimately beneficial to them or anyone else.

The interesting thing however is: what grounds will be used to impeach Trump? The latest suggestion is that Trump’s handling of James Comey’s firing constitutes obstruction of justice, adding yet another ground to what is already a long list. But we have been down this road many times before.

The one thing we can say about making public accusations against a high-profile figure is this: whatever the publicly stated reasons for removing the person, they won’t be the real reasons why those behind the prosecution want to get rid of them.

This famously happened as far back as the Council of Constance in 1416 when it tried the Antipope John XXIII. John’s crime was being on what was suddenly considered the wrong side of the split in the Western Church, which his former supporters wanted immunity from being part of. However, as Edward Gibbon noted, when it came to his trial “the most scandalous charges were suppressed – the Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest”.

More recently a scandal engulfed the English county of Somerset in 1986 over the decision not to renew the contracts of two of its cricket team’s star players, both West Indians, who had helped the club win multiple trophies after they had never won any before. The official reason for the sacking was that the two stars were no longer pulling their weight. In fact one of the sacked players had been reported to be a drug user, and Somerset’s other big star, Englishman Ian Botham who resigned over the issue, was proven to also be a drug user around the same time, the headlines concerning this being cited as a distraction for the club.

So will we ever hear why so many people with the power to do it want Trump out? It is unlikely, for one reason – look who has been appointed the Special Counsel!

Wolf Tending Sheep

One of the grounds to impeach Trump is his alleged collusion with Russia to win the election. Important overseas governments, not least that of the US, always try their hand at influencing elections in other countries in the way they like. However actively colluding with other governments to influence an election is a serious violation of US law. Russia may have committed no crime, but anyone colluding with it to procure a particular election result certainly has.

However the Department of Justice investigation into this matter will now be overseen by Robert Mueller, the former assistant FBI Director. Initially this appointment was greeted with jubilation, particularly by those who drew parallels with the gradual destruction of Richard Nixon by the appointment of investigators he had long resisted appointing himself. But what do we know about Mueller?

We know that he has longstanding links to the gun running empire of Senator John McCain. We know that he has a history of laundering corrupt governments – it was his agents who were brought in to whitewash former Georgian president Saakashvili over the probable murder of his own Prime Minister, and his government’s part in the illegal exportation of arms to terrorists through issuing fake end user certificates.

The Rest…HERE

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