- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
(CNN) - Democrats are injecting an urgent new argument in their impeachment campaign that is already moving rapidly: President Donald Trump poses such a blatant threat to the republic that there is no time to lose.
His emerging government is pushing Trump's Republican defenders, who have long struggled to unite around a coherent strategy of their own, to launch a new counterattack, warning that the rush to condemn the president proves that the Democratic case is superficial and It is politically motivated. The president himself seemed to contradict that defense on Thursday morning, tweeting, "If you are going to accuse me, do it now, quickly, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our country can return to business."
The confrontation over time arose from the first hearing of the Judicial Commission of the House on Wednesday, which changed the debate about the specific facts of Trump's alleged irregularity to the appropriate constitutional consequences he should face.
(Credit: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images)
The dispute about how fast to go and about the scope of the Democratic political trial case extended, in much more civil and respectful terms than bitter exchanges between legislators, in a debate between four renowned law professors who were asked to will testify before the committee about the mechanics and the justifications of the accusation.
Three of the four, who were invited by the Democrats, agreed that the president's transgressions were already severe enough to justify the last political sanction of the political trial. The fourth, a Republican guest, urged Democrats to slow down and exhaust the full scope of the law to demand testimony from key witnesses before presenting a case to the nation that Trump should be removed.
The controversy over whether Democrats are rushing to judge Trump offers both parties new strategic options in an increasingly virulent collision over whether Trump abused his power by pressing Ukraine for favors before the 2020 elections and a way to compress a case full of overwhelming details, unknown foreign actors and deep principles of governance in an understandable narrative.
And it gives each side a measure of constitutional coverage for the less elevated factors that are really shaping its calculations: the public's tolerance for an extended political duel and its impact on the 2020 elections.
- Pelosi asks the Judicial Commission to bring political trial charges against Trump
"Are you ready?" House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi asked her assembly on Wednesday, setting the stage for an accelerated calendar that could see Trump accused by the entire House before Christmas holidays and New Year.
Pelosi is also silently taking the temperature of his assembly before making a final decision on the final game of the House process, and how widely to draw the articles of political judgment, CNN's Manu Raju reported Wednesday. The president of the Chamber gave the green light to the Judicial Commission to bring charges of political trial against Trump.
Pelosi said Thursday at a press conference that the Democrats will proceed with the charges of political trial against President Trump.
“The facts are indisputable. The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by retaining military aid and a crucial meeting of the Oval Office in exchange for the announcement of an investigation into his political rival, ”said Pelosi.
"Today, I ask the president (of the judicial commission) to make political trial charges," he added. "The president leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt the elections once again for his own benefit."
At the hearing on Wednesday, the president of the Judicial Commission of the House of Representatives, Jerry Nadler, warned in increasingly serious terms that the Democrats had no choice but to act quickly against the president to protect the nation.
"If we don't act to keep it under control now, it is almost certain that President Trump will try again to intervene in the elections for his personal and political benefit," the New York Democrat warned, implicitly rejecting a Republican argument that Trump's fate should Let voters decide this near the November 2020 elections.
- Melania Trump defends her son after the joke of a teacher at the political trial hearing
But Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the main Republican on the Commission, relied on the urgency of the Democrats to frame the latter in a baffling sequence of Trump's Republican defenses, most of whom have avoided a damaging pattern of facts about your behavior
"They want to do it before the end of the year: 'We are afraid of the elections, which we will lose again,'" he said, paraphrasing an alleged Democratic justification for quickly accusing Trump of avoiding an alleged reaction from voters.
"The clock and the calendar are what drives the political trial," Collins warned. "Not the facts."
Expert warns against 'quick' dismissal
Republican criticism that the Democrats are going too fast through a process that they themselves have tried to obstruct at every step is false, and raises the question of why Nadler did not demand that they join the Democrats to force the key material that White House is trying to keep hidden.
But this approach at least offers more intellectual ballast than any previous political trial defense of the Republican Party, as exposed by the minority witness at the hearing, Jonathan Turley.
Professor at the George Washington University School of Law argued that Trump's actions, allegedly withholding military aid to force Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, were not attributable. But he did not rule out that an extended recall investigation could eventually find a case for which he should answer.
And he criticized the Democrats for not using the courts and the full scope of the law to force the testimony of key witnesses and obtain documents that the White House has refused to provide.
“The accusations require a certain period of saturation and maturation. That is, the public has to catch up, ”Turley said, arguing that a“ fast and narrow ”accusation would create a dangerous precedent for future presidencies.
"I am not prejudging what your records would show," he said.
"But if they expedite this challenge, they will leave half of the country behind," Turley said, arguing that the challenge was such a solemn task that every lead must be grounded to convince the American people that it is appropriate to take such a step. Draconian at the heart of American democracy.
“This is not an impulse purchase item. You are trying to eliminate a duly elected president of the United States. ”
Turley's approach has more constitutional credibility than previous Republican efforts to discredit the investigation as a partisan hoax or to adopt Trump's stream of misinformation designed to create doubts about harmful events in the minds of voters, including the difficult assertion of Believing that he withdrew aid to Ukraine because of a long-standing concern about corruption.
It was also more credible than the mocking claim of Trump's campaign in an email on Wednesday that the hearing, on a vital constitutional issue that should be considered with all due seriousness, was "a nap."
This new defense could also emerge as an option for Republicans who want to vote to acquit Trump for political reasons in a Senate trial, but who are irritated at the hysterical arguments of his House colleagues, including the idea that Ukraine made a great effort in the style of Russia to interfere in the 2016 elections.
"We live in a dictatorship"
The Democrats used their witnesses to paint a picture of Trump's abuses of power in such amazing proportions that his immediate elimination is the only way to secure democracy in the United States.
The three law professors convened by the majority agreed that Trump had committed multiple prosecutable crimes, in the commission of the Ukrainian scheme and obstructing Congress by covering it up.
"The evidence reveals that a president who used the powers of his office to demand that a foreign government participate in undermining a candidate in competition for the presidency," said Pamela Karlan, a Stanford law professor.
Harvard law professor, Noah Feldman, warned: "If we cannot accuse a president who abuses his office for his personal advantage, we no longer live in a democracy."
“We live in a monarchy or we live under a dictatorship. That is why the authors created the possibility of a political trial. ”
Law professor at the University of North Carolina, Michael Gerhardt, argued that the president’s attempts to thwart Trump’s political trial investigation had reached historic levels.
"In this situation, the large-scale obstruction of those citations I think torpedoes the separation of powers," he said.
"Therefore, their only recourse is, in a sense, to protect their institutional prerogatives, and that would include dismissal."
While the report of the House Intelligence Commission published on Tuesday highlighted the angle of obstruction as a justification for the political trial, the Democrats have so far focused mainly on the facts of the president's foreign policy scheme to pressure the government from Ukraine.
But the general refusal of the White House to comply with 71 Democratic requests for documents, revealed in the report, and its blocking of the testimony of key White House officials is strengthening the case of obstruction and presents an opportunity to present a more complete case. to the Americans.
Party leaders have warned that they are not willing to allow the White House to extend the political trial drama during the many months that would lead to multiple legal challenges.
There is also a political motivation: Pelosi's desire to quickly send Trump's fate to the Senate is seen as an effort to focus the political focus on the Democrats' attempt to expel Trump at the polls next year that begins with the assemblies from Iowa in February.
CNN's collaborator and presidential historian, Timothy Naftali, suggested that Democrats should call for Republican deception and demand cooperation to obtain witnesses and the evidence Turley said they should want.
Democrats should say "'these are the holes' and tell President Trump" we want him to have the opportunity to defend himself "and he will say" no, "I suspect," said Naftali, a professor of history at the University of New York.
"If the American people think that the rush has to do with the New Hampshire primary and not with the problem of obtaining documents from the White House, they will not understand the seriousness of this."
Political judgment