America is witnessing the Democrats’ attempt to file a false report against President Trump. In the next step of their resolve to undermine the Constitution, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee passed two articles of impeachment on a strictly party-line, partisan vote.
Shameful liberals in the media are reporting on this “historic impeachment” as if impeachment itself is evidence or a conviction, in a transparent attempt to pretend there is any actual legal merit to this sham.
“Impeachment” is simply the term for filing charges in this context. Similarly to a regular prosecutor “charging” a person with an alleged crime through the act of filing charges, constitutionally the House is charging through the act of filing articles of impeachment. But importantly, “impeaching” him does not mean that Trump is actually guilty of anything. If passed by a majority of the full House, Trump will have only been charged.
Think of “impeaching” as synonymous with “charging” in this context. If someone has been charged, we generally understand that this means only allegations and a presumption of innocence. That is the same here for impeachment — only allegations, and the president has the presumption of innocence and has not been found guilty of any wrongdoing simply because of the filing of articles of impeachment.
The Constitution in Articles I and II outlines the power for charging or “impeaching” a president for specific qualifying offenses. The legal forum and legal actions are different than a regular court, so the legal terminology is also different. But the similarity is that both regular charges and impeachment are legal processes that have to abide carefully by the rule of law. Just like the regular criminal system does not provide for charging for certain types of conduct, neither does the impeachment process.
For example, a prosecutor could not file criminal charges against a person for conduct that is not actually illegal. But if a corrupt prosecutor’s goal was to file charges regardless of the facts and evidence, they could embellish the facts or manipulate the system just to try to harm a person in a malicious prosecution, and unfortunately, that does sometimes happen.
The constitutional system of impeachment can be abused. Impeaching a president also has to have a legal basis for conduct that actually qualifies. But acting like malicious prosecutors filing false charges in an attempt to manipulate the system to their advantage, House Democrats are trying to file false impeachment against President Trump for their own political purposes — not because there is any genuine legal reason.
That is what is actually historic about this filing of impeachment — it is a malicious prosecution and constitutionally and legally baseless. The House cannot prosecute impeachment for any reason they want to. Contrary to what mainstream media is claiming, impeachment is not purely political. Like criminal charges, impeachment can only be filed for conduct specified in Article II, Section 4 (“treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”) and must have evidentiary support.
The House Judiciary Committee on Friday maliciously advanced two articles of impeachment, “abuse of power” and “obstruction of congress,” that do not qualify as impeachable offenses here. Worse, the committee has not found evidence for these articles.
The “abuse of power” charge is merely the Democrats’ objection to Trump’s foreign policy. This is not an impeachable offense — that’s why we have elections. The Constitution provides specific powers to each elected official, and how that official exercises their powers is called policy.
Trump was acting within his constitutional authority to set foreign policy and to ensure foreign aid was not used for corrupt purposes and complied with our national security interests. There is no evidence of “abuse of power” — the evidence shows Trump was acting in the interests of the country, and the testimony Democratic witnesses provided only disagreed with the president’s policy. Disagreement isn’t a legitimate reason to impeach.
“Obstruction of Congress” is the Democrats’ way of ignoring the separation of powers and the law. Every president has exercised legitimate executive privilege and due process rights. The president is not required simply to obey the whim of Congress without objection. When there is a dispute over the powers of Congress to force the executive branch to comply, we have another branch of government to resolve those questions of law: the judiciary.
Our Constitution provides for this to ensure that Congress doesn’t overreach and that there is enforcement for the executive to comply where proper. But the Democrats don’t want to wait for a decision from the courts. They want to pretend they are the highest branch of government, and if President Trump, the White House, and the executive branch don’t automatically do everything congressional Democrats prefer, they can whine and pretend this is illegal and impeachable.
It isn’t.
As these two articles of impeachment move to the full House next week for deliberation and a vote, pay close attention to what Democrats are saying is the reason for filing their false charges — they “can’t wait until the next election.” This is beyond absurd. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to oust President Trump because they don’t want him reelected.
This is nothing more than a malicious prosecution. House Democrats are poised to file a false report, abusing the constitutional system for their own advantage. Their false impeachment is the only abuse of power happening here.
Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) is a constitutional law attorney and the senior legal adviser for the Trump 2020 campaign. She is the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
