Hypocrisy..

ArtII.S4.4.9 President Donald Trump and Impeachable Offenses

Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

President Donald Trump was impeached twice during his single term in office. In each case, he was acquitted on all counts by the Senate.

The first impeachment trial stemmed from a call President Trump had with the President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in which President Trump asked the Ukrainian President to announce two investigations: one involving his potential opponent in the upcoming 2020 presidential election and a second into unsubstantiated allegations that entities within Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.1 At the time of the call, the Office of Management and Budget had frozen $400 million in military aid to Ukraine at the direction of the President.2 The contents of the call initially came to light through an intelligence community whistleblower report, but a summary of the call was later made public by President Trump.3

The House investigation proceeded in two phases. The fact-finding portion of the investigation was primarily handled by the House Intelligence Committee, in cooperation with the Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Committee on Foreign Affairs.4 The early stage of this phase of the investigation saw some controversy over whether the House must explicitly authorize the initiation of an impeachment investigation. Although the Speaker of the House had announced that the committee investigations constituted an official impeachment inquiry, the White House counsel objected to the investigations on the ground that the investigation lacked the necessary authorization for a valid impeachment proceeding and violated the Due Process Clause.5 As a result, the President instructed members of his administration not to cooperate with the House’s unconstitutional inquiry.6

The House later took action to explicitly approve the impeachment investigation by adopting a resolution authorizing the House committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist . . . to impeach Donald John Trump.7 Nevertheless, the White House and other Executive Branch offices generally refused to comply with the House investigators requests for information, including subpoenas. Some Executive Branch officials, however, made the individual determination to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry and, as a result, the Intelligence Committee was able to hold a number of investigative hearings and issue a report outlining their findings. The record established in the fact finding phase was then provided to the Judiciary Committee.