Legal absolution will not save Pelosi from political damnation

Pelosi warned against such highly partisan impeachment

Pelosi warned against such highly partisan impeachment proceedings last March:

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,”

Pelosi was reiterating Nadler’s identical position expressed on 10 December 1998:

“The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters as expressed in a national election. We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our very system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat. And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people and of their representatives in congress of the absolute necessity. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other. Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come. And will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.”

Michael Gerhardt, has given Pelosi and Nadler a legal get out of jail card

To those who vote in the President every four years—Pelosi and Nadler were speaking their language: you never impeach a President unless there is bipartisan support. 

The American public is now witnessing Pelosi and Nadler abandoning that belief.  Voters will not take kindly to this about face by Pelosi and Nadler—seeing them dividing the nation by changing their positions as an act of political illegitimacy. 

One of the four expert law Professors who testified for over eight hours before Nadler and his Committee,  Professor Michael Gerhardt, has given Pelosi and Nadler a legal get out of jail card.

I posed the following unasked question to those four legal experts: 

“Is the appropriate standard required to impeach the President the one laid down by Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler himself on 10 December 1998?”

Professor Gerhardt had the courtesy to respond—the others did not.

Professor Gerhardt: This is a good question, but I never thought the chairman's standard is the right one.  In my testimony, I quoted Hamilton on the standard.  No one questioned me, but it is not the standard the chairman proclaimed at one time.  And I have followed this same standard since 1989 when I first wrote about the process, long before Mr. Trump was president.

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Pelosi will discover that legal absolution won’t save her from eternal political damnation for betraying the American people’s trust

My response: Could you please refer me to your evidence that contradicts Chairman Nadler's view that there must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of the major political parties and opposed by the other. Professor Gerhardt: Sure the chairman is giving his personal standard there in my statement I quoted Hamilton whose essay on impeachment in the federalist papers sets out what I think is the relevant constitutional law on this we typically don’t take a member’s view as the authority for the standard. My response: In your opinion then is a simple majority only of the Judicial Committee required to recommend the impeachment of the President to Congress? Would a simple majority vote subsequently of members of the Congress [ed-House] to impeach the President also only be required?

Professor Gerhardt has regrettably failed to respond.

Pelosi will discover that legal absolution won’t save her from eternal political damnation for betraying the American people’s trust.

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