Tag Archives: responsibilities

Impeachment And Trial

Posted on by
Reply

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is continuing to refuse to deliver her caucus’ Article of Impeachment to the Senate for trial.  Leave aside the premises that by withholding her Articles, she is confessing that her caucus has no case to present for trial or that she is functionally absolving President Donald Trump of any impeachable wrong-doing.  As The Wall Street Journal noted, her move only trivializ[es] a serious constitutional power and process. As the WSJ further noted,

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says impeachment requires a formal transmittal of the articles to the Senate, whether by sedan chair or overnight FedEx, or that the House must appoint impeachment managers.

Here, though, the WSJ misstated the case:

If she never sends the articles and there is no trial, she will have effectively trampled on executive power and Senate prerogatives by maligning a President without the chance for acquittal at trial.

The claim is certainly true in the latter part, if there is no trial; however, Pelosi’s not sending along the Articles does not mean there can be no trial.

The Progressive-Democrat caucus’ Articles of Impeachment are recorded in the House Journal IAW our Constitution’s Article I, Section 5:

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy….

Of course, there’s nothing requiring Secrecy in the publicly done impeachment process.  The Senate can simply collect the Articles from the House’s publicly available Journal and proceed from there. If current Senate Rules don’t have provision for that, it’s a simply enough matter—a majority vote—to adjust its Rules.

Even with the Articles collected on Senate initiative, its current Rules say that a trial can’t be begun until the House appoints its impeachment managers, which Pelosi also is refusing to do. This is another easy adjustment to relevant Senate Rules.

The Progressive-Democrats have impeached our President, and with that, the House’s role in the process is done. All that’s happening now on the House side is a toddler’s temper tantrum, a toddler holding his breath until he turns…blue.

The FBI and Surveillance

Posted on by
Reply

DoJ’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, has produced a report that’s pretty damning of the FBI and its surveillance practices.  This has raised concerns about how far the FBI goes, and whether it exceeds the spirit, even the letter, of our laws governing FBI surveillance.

Monday’s report…also faulted the bureau for its “failure to adhere to its own standards of accuracy and completeness when filing applications” to conduct electronic surveillance on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign staffer, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Privacy advocates said the report’s findings validated their belief that surveillance practices under the FISA law…lacked adequate oversight and transparency.

Indeed. And this is the crux of the matter.  I suspect that the FISA law and other of our government surveillance-related laws are adequate to their task (eliding questions about FISA’s courts). It’s the humans in charge of the FBI, and their subordinates, who are wanting in this.

It’s virtually certain that additional law, or tweakings of existing laws, will accomplishment a good approximation of nothing in redressing this.

I suggest that what is needed are a couple of things.  One is an increase in the severity of sanction applied to those FBI managers (I won’t call them leaders; failure here disqualifies them from that favorable label) who fail in their oversight duties and separately in their transparency duties.  This will produce improvement, but that will erode, just as we’ve reached our present sorry pass via erosion over the past several years. J Edgar Hoover and James Comey are merely the culmination of such erosion.

The other thing promises to produce more long-lasting results. FBI managers who are Presidentially nominated and Senate confirmed should be barred from any service, including pro bono and lobbying, within DoJ under any immediately subsequent administration; they can go work in the private sector instead. Their eligibility for DoJ employment could be restored with the election of the second President (not the next President reelected) after the one in whose administration they served.

This removal from employment should extend into and across the top tiers just below the confirmation positions, as well.

None of those folks will have necessarily done anything wrong or even untoward; it’s merely necessary to break up and terminate the accumulating power of incumbency and bureaucratic inertia.  Some might worry that too much corporate memory would be lost.  Such memory and history are valuable in any enterprise; however, in the case of the FBI, there will be sufficient value in the senior agents and remaining other senior employees. As well as from the non-FBI DoJ with its outside-looking-in perspective.

It Doesn’t Matter

Posted on by
Reply

Vice President Mike Pence doesn’t think it’s a done deal that the Progressive-Democrats have the votes in the House to impeach President Donald Trump.

He’s operating from a misunderstanding of the Progressive-Democrats’ purpose. Their move has nothing to do with impeachment—they know they have no case based on what they’ve leaked from their secret hearings and what’s been exposed in both their committees’ public hearings—and everything to do with smearing Trump and poisoning the upcoming election.

As Al Green (D, TX) has made clear.

There is no limit on the number of the times the Senate can vote to convict or not [convict] a president. No limit to the number of times a House can vote to impeach, or not….

And

I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach the president, he will get re-elected.

The Progressive-Democrats will just keep the “impeachment” effort alive and ongoing through the campaign season.

Subpoenas

Posted on by
Reply

Congressman Jim Banks (R, IN) wants to subpoena Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) telephone records in retaliation for Schiff’s releasing the personal call records of a fellow Congressman, journalists, and President Donald Trump’s personal lawyers.

This is why I’ve called for a tit for tat.

Banks’ anger is understandable, but his proposed retaliatory move is misguided.  The Congressman whose call record was so dishonestly publicized by Schiff, Devin Nunes, has the better response: deal with Schiff’s dishonesty and his abuse of subpoenas in court, not with revenge.

Nor Republicans nor Conservatives are Progressive-Democrats; there’s no need to stoop to their level. There’s no need for honest men and women to weaponize the subpoena process or the subpoenas themselves as the Progressive-Democrats are so dishonestly trying to do. Subpoenas are legitimate only if there is legitimate probable cause.

Streamlining Negotiations

Posted on by
Reply

DoJ says it wants to “streamline” negotiations over the size of penalties misbehaving white collar employees should pay.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski, the head of the department’s criminal division—which overseas various white-collar criminal investigations—said the DOJ has sought to reduce the time it takes to negotiate resolutions by grounding proposed fines in US sentencing guidelines and other objective criteria.

Here’s a thought on how to streamline those negotiations.

Stop negotiating.  Make a plea offer (rarely, these too often get used to extort guilty pleas of any sort), and if the white collar declines—no back and forth—go to criminal trial.  Better, if DoJ thinks it has an actual case, go straight to criminal trial.

If DoJ doesn’t think it can make its case in front of a criminal court jury, then DoJ doesn’t have a case to make. Leave the white collar the hell alone.