IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY Dershowitz: Trump pursuing quid pro quo to help re-election is not impeachable
The odor of burgeoning dictatorship
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Alan Dershowitz, a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, argued Wednesday that a quid pro quo arrangement that benefits the president politically is fine because all politicians believe their elections are in the public's interest.
He said that if Trump did withhold nearly $400 million in aid to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of Democrats to help his campaign, it wasn't an impeachable offense because Trump thinks his election would be to the country's benefit. Therefore, he had no corrupt motive.
"If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment," he said during the first day of the question-and-answer period of the Senate impeachment trial.
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Dershowitz said there were three possible motives for a quid pro quo in foreign policy: the public interest, personal political interest and personal financial interest.
In the end, he argued, only the latter is corrupt.
"Every public official I know believes" their election "is in the public interest," Dershowitz added.
All hail dicktater donny rump!
Alan "I kept my underpants on" Dershowitz view is an exceptionally small minority view. Perhaps a handful of attorrneys and legal scholars hold to some kind of similar view. There is not much credibility there.
All in all, Dershowitz is correct. Seeing as how Trump is cleaner than freshly driven snow in an unpopulated region with his financials. Nothing else matters anymore, right?
Yup!
I'd love to hear from some of our conservative friends in regards to this. If I were they, I'd stay as far away from it as possible though.
Yeah, the most interesting thing about Trump is nobody really knows how this alleged billionaire is a billionaire considering all of his documented financial failures.
And these are only the ones we know about. Far less cash outlays here, but I can't help but wonder if there are dozens of other payments Trump made in line with
Daniels and McDougal. A notable other thing concerning Trump is the fact that sex is never an issue.
Apparently, when he was doing The Apprentice, part of his contract was that producers and everyone on the show, were required to refer to him as a billionaire. It is a label he put on himself, with no evidence to its accuracy.
He also said that he himself decided how much his net worth is based on how he feels that day.
I'm not sure he could tell the truth if his life depended on it.
What a great example of news organizations and politicians lacking the capacity to chew gum and walk at the same time.
Alan Dershowitz has argued that there must be a crime to justify impeachment. Dershowitz has also argued that politics is not a crime.
Dershowitz is arguing that a President using their status and position as President for political purposes is not a crime or an abuse of power. Political motivations are not sufficient to justify impeachment. However, political motivations does not exempt a President from impeachment for violations of law (or, I presume, regulations). But that also means that impeaching a President requires citing specific legal violations and infractions as justification for impeachment.
Sure.
That’s how ya get a dictatorship started. Just make excuses to allow someone to exert control that leads to more control, that leads to complete control. As long as it’s in partisan interests leading to personal gain, who gives a fuck if Democracy is upended in the process.
Yes, that is one of the things Alan Dershowitz has been warning about. Impeaching a President for political reasons is how a dictatorship gets started. Politics equating itself with law opens the door for dictatorship.
How does a dictator govern? Dictatorships depend upon a dedicated bureaucracy that is not accountable to legislative or judicial oversight and not accountable to the people through elections. The bureaucracy creates law through regulation without legislative input. The bureaucracy decides what laws to ignore, what laws to enforce, and what laws the bureaucracy will create by fiat. The bureaucracy creates its own authority for secret police, spies, enforcers, and propaganda machines.
Has Donald Trump been a friend of the bureaucracy? Has Donald Trump tried to give the bureaucracy more authority? Has Donald Trump tried to create more bureaucracy? Donald Trump cannot be a dictator without a dedicated bureaucracy.
We are a nation of 330 million people, of course we have a bureaucracy. The dictator will take control of the bureaucracy for his own purposes. It isnt clear yet if that might be the direction Trump tries to go.