Fox News contributor Judge Andrew Napolitano blasted the Senate’s acquittal of President Trump, calling the chamber’s vote a “legal assault on the Constitution.”
In Thursday op-ed for Fox News, Napolitano opened his argument with a quote from British novelist George Orwell’s1984, which read, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The judge lambasted Senate Republicans for accepting the “morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest” arguments of Trump’s impeachment defense team.
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Alan Dershowitz, a member of the president’s legal defense team, argued during the Senate trial that the articles of impeachment do not fall under the Constitution’s criteria of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Harvard Law School professor emeritus claimed the House’s abuse of power and obstruction of Congress articles were so broad that they would have led to the impeachment of many presidents, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
However, Napolitano was not convinced. He said such an argument “effectively resuscitates from history’s graveyard President Richard Nixon’s logic that ‘when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal’ because the president is above the law” and was forced onto senators by Republican leaders. He reiterated his view that the July 2019 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky qualified as a constitutional high crime or misdemeanor.
“Federal law prohibits such solicitation as criminal and prohibits government officials from seeking personal favors in return for performing their governmental duties. The latter is bribery. Because the solicitation that Trump committed was a crime against the government, it is among those referred to when the Constitution was written as a ‘high’ crime. High crimes are a constitutional basis for impeachment, along with bribery and treason,” Napolitano wrote.
Trump’s phone call with Zelensky prompted the House to initiate an impeachment process. Democrats made the case that, if Trump made foreign aid contingent on Ukraine investigating his political rivals, the president abused his power, and subsequently prevented Congress from investigating his actions. The chamber voted in December to impeach Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, with no Republicans voting in favor.
“Trump will luxuriate in his victory. But the personal victory for him is a legal assault on the Constitution. The president has taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Instead, he has trashed it … Somewhere, Richard Nixon is smiling,” Napolitano concluded.
