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By Modern Standards, Biden Should Be Impeached | Opinion

  
Via:  Texan1211  •  2 years ago  •  11 comments

By:   Mark R. Weaver (Newsweek)

By Modern Standards, Biden Should Be Impeached | Opinion
Based on modern legislative interpretations of impeachable conduct, the U.S. House of Representatives has enough evidence to impeach President Joe Biden.

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By Mark R. Weaver former Deputy Attorney General of OhioFOLLOW

Based on modern legislative interpretations of impeachable conduct, the U.S. House of Representatives has enough evidence to impeach President Joe Biden. "Show me the treason, high crime, or misdemeanor" some will shout. Here's my reply: Go get elected to the House, where you and your colleagues alone decide what evidence meets that standard.

The Constitution grants the House the sole power to impeach. This authority, like the queen's exclusive ability to move diagonally, vertically, and horizontally along a chessboard, is not shared. Just as a queen's move is not constrained by the paths of other pieces, the House's decision to impeach isn't subject to review by other government actors. And the House exercises considerable judgement in defining the founders' intentionally vague phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Gerald Ford, one of the few Americans to ever hold the position of top congressional leader and president, once observed, "an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." That notion is bipartisan. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, in the first Trump impeachment, expressly stated that "impeachment is part of democratic governance."

Lest you think that such broad congressional power is dangerous, the founding fathers disagreed. While debating impeachment powers, Constitutional Convention delegate Elbridge Gerry noted that a good president "will not fear them [and] a bad one ought to be kept in fear of them."

In fact, during the ratification debate, James Iredell, who would become one of our first Supreme Court Justices, said, "If the President does a single act by which the people are prejudiced, he is punishable ... and impeachable."

While the founding fathers did think impeachment would be rare, the modern trend of endless partisan whack-a-mole has proved their predictions wrong. Indeed, heated partisan disagreement fueled all four presidential impeachments.

Andrew Johnson made congressional enemies over reconstruction policy and triggered their impeachment ire by firing one of his cabinet secretaries against their wishes. The political discords in the Clinton and Trump impeachments are analogous. The opposing majority in the House looked at the questionable actions of the chief executive, held hearings and, taking political—not legal—action, voted to impeach.

Even accounting for partisan motivation, there's considerable evidence Joe Biden has abused power and more substantiation will likely be revealed in upcoming hearings. The current array deserves review.

It's well established that then-Vice President Biden conditioned a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine on firing the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Hunter Biden's client and benefactor. Biden's claim that the U.S. State Department pushed for that firing has been disproven. Even beyond that, official FBI records document Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, asserting he was paying $5 million to "one Biden" and "to another Biden."

Biden's own Justice Department intentionally allowed the statute of limitations for potential crimes in Hunter's Ukraine dealings to lapse. Biden prosecutors also refused to bring charges against Hunter for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act that are so obvious a mildly skilled law student could prosecute them.

Career IRS agents who blew the whistle on Hunter's tax flimflam have had their credibility vindicated in his recent indictment. Curiously, the Biden prosecutors on that case spent more time detailing the salacious spending rather than the millions funneled to the Biden family. And the creampuff plea deal engineered by Biden's Justice Department to allow the First Son to skate would've taken effect but for the watchful eye of a federal judge.

But it's not just Joe's dealings with Hunter that deserve examination. Court records show that the president's brother James, who shuffled large checks to brother Joe, told business connections that the Biden name opened government doors for Middle East interests and even Communist China.

Richard Nixon was never charged with a crime or impeached but he was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the crimes of others. Despite his provable lies to the contrary, Joe Biden was involved with his son Hunter's foreign influence business. Whether that makes him a co-conspirator in Hunter's crimes is a ripe area for congressional scrutiny.

The most active architect of the Constitution, James Madison, described the type of behaviors that could trigger impeachment as "incapacity, negligence or perfidy." Impeachment served as a safeguard, Madison said, against betrayal of "his trust to foreign powers." Ukraine and China leap to mind.

With these facts in hand, maintaining the partisan claim of "no evidence" is like denying the daylight at dawn. Yes, things were only dimly seen for a while, but the sunlit scrutiny of hearings will almost certainly cast an undeniable beam on this conclusion: It's time to impeach Joe Biden.

Mark R. Weaver is a prosecutor and formerly served as a Justice Department spokesman and Deputy Attorney General of Ohio. He is the author of "A Wordsmith's Work." X: @MarkRWeaver

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.


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JohnRussell
Professor Principal
2  JohnRussell    2 years ago

This article started out making a little sense, and then suddenly goes completely off the rails, and its credibility is shot to hell.

It's well established that then-Vice President Biden conditioned a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine on firing the prosecutor investigating Burisma, Hunter Biden's client and benefactor. Biden's claim that the U.S. State Department pushed for that firing has been disproven. Even beyond that, official FBI records document Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, asserting he was paying $5 million to "one Biden" and "to another Biden."

This claim has been debunked time after time after time. It is a conspiracy theory. It is not a reason to impeach President Biden. 

I have never heard of the author but if he is spewing conspiracy theories he is extreme MAGA. 

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
2.1  JohnRussell  replied to  JohnRussell @2    2 years ago
Ukrainian prosecutors and anti-corruption advocates who were pushing for an investigation into the dealings of Burisma and its owner, Mykola Zlochevskiy, said the probe had been dormant long before Biden leveled his demand.

"There was no pressure from anyone from the United States" to close the case against Zlochevskiy, Vitaliy Kasko, who was a deputy prosecutor-general under Shokin and is now first deputy prosecutor-general, told   Bloomberg News in May.   "It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015," he added.

Activists say the case had been sabotaged by Shokin himself. As an example, they say two months before Hunter Biden joined Burisma's board, British authorities had requested information from Shokin's office as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering by Zlochevskiy. Shokin ignored them.

Kaleniuk and AntAC published a detailed timeline of events surrounding the Burisma case, an outline of evidence suggesting that three consecutive chief prosecutors of Ukraine -- first Shokin’s predecessor, then Shokin, and then his successor -- worked to bury it.

"Ironically, Joe Biden asked Shokin to leave because the prosecutor failed [to pursue] the Burisma investigation, not because Shokin was tough and active with this case," Kaleniuk said.

Ukrainian prosecutors have described no evidence indicating that Biden sought to help his son by getting Shokin dismissed -- and have suggested that they have not discovered any such evidence.

But there is a long list of Western organizations, governments, and diplomats, as well as Ukrainian anti-corruption groups, that wanted to see Shokin fired.

They include the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, the U.S. government, foreign investors, and Ukrainian advocates of reform.

Why Was Ukraine's Top Prosecutor Fired? The Issue At The Heart Of The Dispute Gripping Washington (rferl.org)
 
 
 
Gazoo
Junior Silent
2.3  Gazoo  replied to  JohnRussell @2    2 years ago

Bullshit, your boy biden bragged about it on video.

 
 

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