Quote:
Originally Posted by detbuch
Yes, do focus on the transcript. There is nothing in it that shows Trump being criminial or impeachable.
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A crime is not a requirement of impeachment.
Impeachment is a vote in the House and anything is impeachable.
Look at the reasons proposed for impeaching the last President.
Job offer to Pennsylvania Representative Joe Sestak
Preventing Obama from "pushing his agenda"
Obama administration immigration policy
Libya intervention
Benghazi attack
Impeachment requested by a townhall meeting audience member
False claims of being born outside the United States
IRS targeting conservatives
Debt ceiling crisis
Hearing on "President's Constitutional Duty"
Prisoner swap
Transgender bathroom directive
The Transcript shows bribery as defined by the Founders.
Perhaps the stenographers very professional exact words that Trump claims exist will show more or was he hyperbolizing once again.
In fact, Trump’s conduct almost certainly satisfies the modern statutory standard for bribery. As Randall Eliason has explained, a quid pro quo “need not be stated in express terms; corrupt actors are seldom so clumsy, and the law may not be evaded through winks and nods.” We have little doubt that a prosecutor would be able to establish a quid pro quo based on what was said on the call and the surrounding facts and context. (As an aside, Trump’s conduct also likely qualifies as extortion. As James Lindgren has explained at length, historically there has been a substantial overlap between the concepts of extortion and bribery, and around the time of the Founding, the terms were often used to describe the same conduct.)
But even if Trump’s actions do not satisfy the modern criminal standard for bribery, the argument from Trump’s defenders is misplaced—because the federal statute isn’t the relevant statement of the law in the context of impeachment.
The Founders had no intent of tying the constitutional definition of bribery to federal criminal statutory law. On the most basic level, no federal criminal code existed at the time that the Constitution was drafted. Beyond that, the Framers had no reason to believe that Congress would enact federal criminal statutes in the future. As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz explain in their comprehensive book on impeachment, “To End a Presidency,” criminal law was understood to be the province of the states, and there was very little federal criminal law at all until the mid-20th century. To the extent there was federal criminal law, it followed the common law model. That is why the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors can’t be limited by federal statutes. The same goes for bribery—as there was no general federal bribery statute at all until 1853.