Does holding up $391,000,000 in Congressionally-appropriated Ukraine military/foreign aid constitute “bribery?” Does accepting foreign help constitute accepting a bribe?
Trump abused his office to attempt to bribe Ukraine’s President. Why? To bolster Trump’s re-election campaign. How many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians died because of Trump’s arrogant, illegal, unconstitutional aid delays?
Enough dupery. Enough Trumpery.
It’s time for Trump to go. Have faith. Our system will work once again.https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2019/12/ed-slavin-column-time-to-dethrone-king.html
Here's my impeachment column from the Sunday, December 8, 2019 St. Augustine Record.
By Ed Slavin, St. Augustine
Posted Dec 6, 2019 at 11:30 AM
St. Augustine Record
A Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation air pollution regulatory manager once told his subordinate, a supervisor, that the State of Tennessee owned his “mind” for “7 1/2 hours a day,” and that if told by management to “jump off a roof,” he must “jump off a roof.” The supervisor was fired for doing his job, e.g., citing landowners for setting massive tire fires.
Americans’ fundamental rights to speak our minds must be protected and not neglected. But President Donald John Trump treats everyone — even Generals and Ambassadors — like hired hands, as if he were King Donald I.
Exhibit A: Trump firing our Ambassador to Ukraine, based on defamation from Rudolf Giuliani’s Russian-American associates.
Prediction: Trump will be impeached by our House of Representatives. Trial will be in the Senate, which Gladstone once called “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
As a teenager, I watched in awe as Congress investigated President Richard Milhous Nixon. Our system worked.
As it unfolded, heroic Senate Watergate Committee Chair Samuel James Ervin Jr. (D-N.C.), said, “I love my country.... I think that Watergate is the greatest tragedy this country has ever suffered. I used to think that the Civil War was our country’s greatest tragedy, but I do remember some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.”
Watergate-conspiracy tapes were ordered released by the Supreme Court. Nixon resigned rather than be impeached, after he was told by Sen. Barry Goldwater, et al, that he had perhaps 15 Senate votes left.
Will Trump profit from Nixon’s example?
Let us hope so.
115 years ago, U.S. District Judge Charles H. Swayne of St. Augustine, Florida and Wilmington, Delaware, was impeached by the House of Representatives on a party-line vote, accused of:
‒ Expense account padding;
‒ Abusing powers as railway bankruptcy-receiver to twice order up —for his, his family’s and friends’ use — a private railway car, porter and accoutrements from the bankrupt Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railway (riding in style to Delaware and California);
‒ Jailing/disbarring two attorneys who requested his recusal (in property case re: land owned by his wife);
‒ Living outside his district boundaries (changed after his appointment), delaying for nine years moving his residence to Pensacola.
Would anyone convict Judge Swayne for alleged foot-dragging, hebetude or reluctance to move to Pensacola?
But who doubts it might constitute a “high crime and misdemeanor” to treat a private railway car as his own — twice — or to refuse to recuse himself in his wife’s case?
Swayne was acquitted Feb. 27, 1905, by Republican-controlled Senate (another party-line vote).
Did the Democratic-controlled House over-try/overstate its case? What If it brought a concise case, instead of hiding its light under a bushel-basket? (12-count, 3,217-word charges, 34-day trial). Some allegations were perhaps overwrought or over-stated, but some were undisputed. Swayne contended some actions were “inadvertent.” Swayne remained a federal judge until his death in 1907.
Trump impeachment articles must focus, like a laser-beam, on one word: “bribery” — one of two specific crimes in our Constitution, Article II, Section 4, before the words “high crimes and misdemeanors.” (The other specifically-named impeachment-crime is “treason,” defined as “levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”)
Does holding up $391,000,000 in Congressionally-appropriated Ukraine military/foreign aid constitute “bribery?” Does accepting foreign help constitute accepting a bribe?
Trump abused his office to attempt to bribe Ukraine’s President. Why? To bolster Trump’s re-election campaign. How many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians died because of Trump’s arrogant, illegal, unconstitutional aid delays?
Enough dupery. Enough Trumpery.
It’s time for Trump to go. Have faith. Our system will work once again.
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