Trump Team Destroys Impeachment Argument

WASHINGTON, D.C. – How do you vote to convict and remove a sitting president…who is no longer president? Put simply; you don’t. Any attempt to do so would be blatantly unconstitutional, not to mention nonsensical.

Then again, making nonsensical arguments with fervor is exactly what the Left does so well, demonstrated by the Article of Impeachment itself, charging Donald Trump with incitement for encouraging supporters to peacefully march to the U.S. Capitol.

So, after the requisite amount of legal team drama, the Trump defense has been outlined and it KOs the impeachment charges in more than one way.

“[…] The constitutional provision requires that a person actually hold office to be impeached. Since the 45th President is no longer “President,” the clause ‘shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for…’ is impossible for the Senate to accomplish, and thus the current proceeding before the Senate is void ab initio as a legal nullity that runs patently contrary to the plain language of the Constitution.

“Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution states “[j]udgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy an office of honor…” (emphasis added). Since removal from office by the Senate of the President is a condition precedent which must occur before, and jointly with, “disqualification” to hold future office, the fact that the Senate presently is unable to remove from office the 45th President whose term has expired, means that Averment 1 is therefore irrelevant to any matter before the Senate […]”

So blinded by their TDS, the Democrats are, that they are pursuing his destruction, not just as a president and political opponent, but as a person.

The response then dismisses the charge of insurrection or rebellion against the nation as laughable (because it is), and further points out that the U.S. Senate has no jurisdiction whatsoever to bar private citizen Donald Trump from holding political office.

One by one, the lawyers point out how irrelevant many of the charges are in the Article, while also reiterating that his comments on election fraud are not only his First Amendment right, but also impossible to deny or affirm without more investigative evidence.

“[…] It is denied that President Trump incited the crowd to engage in destructive behavior. It is denied that the phrase “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore” had anything to do with the action at the Capitol as it was clearly about the need to fight for election security in general, as evidenced by the recording of the speech. It is denied that President Trump intended to interfere with the counting of Electoral votes.[…]”

The attorneys end the outline with a series of blows that should result in the conviction ‘and removal’ of private citizen Donald Trump never materializes, because it is completely unsupported constitutionally and violated Trump’s rights in the process.

Read the full representations, in which Trump destroys the Democrats impeachment argument, below:

“The Senate of the United States lacks jurisdiction over the 45th President because he holds no public office from which he can be removed, and the Constitution limits the authority of the Senate in cases of impeachment to removal from office as the prerequisite active remedy allowed the Senate under our Constitution.

The Senate of the United States lacks jurisdiction over the 45th President because he holds no public office from which he can be removed rendering the Article of Impeachment moot and a non-justiciable question.

Should the Senate act on the Article of Impeachment initiated in the House of Representatives, it will have passed a Bill of Attainder in violation of Article 1, Sec. 9. Cl. 3 of the United States Constitution.

The Article of Impeachment misconstrues protected speech and fails to meet the constitutional standard for any impeachable offense. The House of Representatives deprived the 45th President of due process of law in rushing to issue the Article of Impeachment by ignoring it own procedures and precedents going back to the mid-19th century. The lack of due process included, but was not limited to, its failure to conduct any meaningful committee review or other investigation, engage in any full and fair consideration of evidence in support of the Article, as well as the failure to conduct any full and fair discussion by allowing the 45th President’s positions to be heard in the House Chamber. No exigent circumstances under the law were present excusing the House of Representatives’ rush to judgment. The House of Representatives’ action, in depriving the 45th President of due process of law, created a special category of citizenship for a single individual: the 45th President of the United States. Should this body not act in favor of the 45th President, the precedent set by the House of Representatives would become that such persons as the 45th President similarly situated no longer enjoy the rights of all American citizens guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The actions by the House make clear that in their opinion the 45th President does not enjoy the protections of liberty upon which this great Nation was founded, where free speech, and indeed, free political speech form the backbone of all American liberties. None of the traditional reasons permitting the government to act in such haste (i.e exigent circumstances) were present. The House had no reason to rush its proceedings, disregard its own precedents and procedures, engage in zero committee or other investigation, and fail to grant the accused his “opportunity to be heard” in person or through counsel – all basic tenets of due process of law. There was no exigency, as evidenced by the fact that the House waited until after the end of the President’s term to even send the articles over and there was thus no legal or moral reason for the House to act as it did. Political hatred has no place in the administration of justice anywhere in America, especially in the Congress of the United States.

The Article of Impeachment violates the 45th President’s right to free speech and thought guaranteed under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Article is constitutionally flawed in that it charges multiple instances of allegedly impeachable conduct in a single article. By charging multiple alleged wrongs in one article, the House of Representatives has made it impossible to guarantee compliance with the Constitutional mandate in Article 1, Sec. 3, Cl. 6 that permits a conviction only by at least two-thirds of the members. The House charge fails by interweaving differing allegations rather than breaking them out into counts of alleged individual instances of misconduct. Rule XXIII of the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials provides, in pertinent part, that an article of impeachment shall not be divisible thereon. Because the Article at issue here alleges multiple wrongs in the single article, it would be impossible to know if two-thirds of the members agreed on the entire article, or just on parts, as the basis for vote to convict. The House failed to adhere to strict Senate rules and, instead, chose to make the Article as broad as possible intentionally in the hope that some Senators might agree with parts, and other Senators agree with other parts, but that when these groups of senators were added together, the House might achieve the appearance of two thirds in agreement, when those two thirds of members, in reality, did not concur on the same allegations interwoven into an over-broad article designed for just such a purpose. Such behavior on the part of the House of Representatives may have a less nefarious reason, in the alternative, and simply be a by-product of the haste in which the House unnecessarily acted while depriving the 45th President of the United States of his American right to due process of law. The 45th President of the United States believes and therefore avers that the defect in the drafting of the Article requires that Senators be instructed that if two thirds of them fail to find any portion of the Article lacking in evidence sufficient for conviction, then the entire Article fails and should be dismissed.

The Chief Justice of the United States is not set to preside over the proceedings contemplated by the Senate, as he would be constitutionally required to do if the House was seeking to have the president removed from office under Art. I, Sec 3, Cl. 6 of the United States Constitution. Once the 45th President’s term expired, and the House chose to allow jurisdiction to lapse on the Article of Impeachment, the constitutional mandate for the Chief Justice to preside at all impeachments involving the President evidently disappeared, and he was replaced by a partisan Senator who will purportedly also act as a juror while ruling on certain issues. The House actions thus were designed to ensure that Chief Justice John Roberts would not preside over the proceedings,
which effectively creates the additional appearance of bias with the proceedings now being supervised by a partisan member of the Senate with a long history of public remarks adverse to the 45th President. The 45th President believes and therefore avers that this action of the House of Representatives, additionally, violated his right to due process of law because the House, effectively, maneuvered an ally in the Senate into the judge’s chair.