Thursday, November 10, 2016
What would happen if Donald Trump was impeached?
Google searches for how to remove a president from office increased by nearly 5,000 per cent after Donald Trump won the top job on Wednesday.
Some people have been asking if Mr Trump could be impeached after taking office since before he was even chosen as the Republican nominee, and one law professor has said there is already enough evidence to remove him, before he officially takes office.
Mr Trump also faces a civial case over allegations of fraud related to Trump University that goes to court later this month.
But in reality the process of impeachment is still more complicated — and less mechanical — than some angry Democrats hope.
What is impeachment?
In the US, impeachment is the first step in a constitutionally sanctioned two stage process to remove a president from office for committing “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours”.
According to constitutional lawyers, high crimes and misdemeanours are: "real criminality", so breaking the law; "abuses of power"; or "violation of public trust”.
Beyond, these definitions, it is up to the House of Representatives to decide if an offence warrants impeachment.
In 1970, then-Representative Gerald Ford defined impeachable offences as: ”Whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.“
The House of Representatives decides if there are grounds to consider impeaching a president through an inquiry, a debate, and then a vote, which should include all members of the house. If a majority vote the president guilty on any charges, it will result in impeachment.
However, not a lot actually happens as the result of an initial impeachment. The offending Head of State retains office and can pretty much go about their business as usual until the second stage of the process, in which they will be either convicted or cleared in trial by the Senate.
In this trial, the president will be represented by his lawyers, a select group of House members will serve as ”prosecutors“, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court will preside, and all 100 Senators will acting as the jury.
If in the Senate a two-thirds majority find the president guilty, he will be convicted and removed from office.
Could President Trump be impeached?
Yes, but it is pretty unlikely.
No president has ever actually been removed from office as a result of impeachment, although two — Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — were found guilty of wrongdoing by the House of Representatives, before being cleared by the Senate, and in 1974 President Richard Nixon resigned rather than facing an impeachment process for several charges related to the Watergate scandal.
A major obstacle to impeaching Mr Trump is that both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by the Republicans. Lots of people have speculated that Mr Trump's own party are unlikely to impeach him, unless of course they are put under a huge amount of public pressure.
But, then again, it is not impossible: many Republicans actually do not like the president-elect at all.
Notably, the Republican Speaker Paul Ryan is an outspoken enemy of Mr Trump. The two men have been openly hostile to each other throughout the campaign period, with both initially refusing to endorse the other.
So the house could theoretically turn against him. But are there real grounds for impeachment?
Arguably, yes — a University of Utah law professor called Christopher Lewis Peterson has written a 23-page article analysing why it would be correct for Congress to impeach Mr Trump.
Mr Peterson believes Mr Trump has engaged in fraud and racketeering which meet the criteria of “high crimes and misdemeanours.”
According to Mr Peterson, the Constitution does not prohibit Congress from impeaching a president for alleged acts that happened prior to taking office.
The case against Mr Trump will become more compelling if he is actually convicted of offences, which could happen before he enters the White House. Mr Trump was set to face criminal proceedings for raping a 13-year-old girl, but the case was dropped. However the president-elect is still set to go to court later this month to defend himself against allegations of fraud brought by former students of the now closed Trump University. A number of students claim they were misled into paying up to $35,000 to learn worthless real estate investing “secrets”.
Once a president has taken office they are immune from lawsuits arising during their time as head of state, but the Supreme Court has said this does not extend to acts alleged to have taken place prior to taking office.
So the House of Representatives could turn against Mr Trump, and there could be sufficient legal grounds to impeach him. But to actually kickstart start the mechanism for removing him from office there would probably have to be a shift in public opinion.
While many Americans have taken to the streets in protest against Mr Trump being elected president, many others voted him in.
Bruce Fein, who worked in the Justice Department during Ronald Reagan's presidency, and was also involved in the Republican-led effort to impeach Bill Clinton, told Politico: “Ninety-nine percent of the game is how popular is the president.”
At the moment Mr Trump probably has too many supporters for an impeachment to take place. However, he has promised to do lots of things which could change this. If the economy flagged for example, or if he did institute the use of torture, or begin building a wall to keep Mexicans out, he could make enough enemies to start the process.
Hillary Clinton spotted hiking on day after conceding US election
Scott Bixby
Ex-Democratic presidential nominee went for a hike with her husband near their New York home, hugging a supporter and ‘exchanging some sweet pleasantries’.
An upstate New York woman, hoping to take her mind off of the US election results with a hike through the woods of Westchester County, bumped into another woman on Thursday with a presumably similar notion: Hillary Clinton.
Margot Gerster of White Plains wrote on Facebook that after “feeling so heartbroken since yesterday’s election”, she hoped to relax by taking her young daughter and her dog hiking on Thursday.
“I decided to take them to one of favorite places in Chappaqua,” Gerster wrote, the Westchester hamlet that the Clintons call home. “We were the only ones there and it was so beautiful and relaxing.”
As Gerster was ending her hike, however, she ran into an unexpected couple on the trail: the former secretary of state and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
“I heard a bit of rustling coming towards me and as I stepped into the clearing there she was, Hillary Clinton and Bill with their dogs doing exactly the same thing as I was,” Gerster wrote. “I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking [my daughter] with me to vote for her.”
Clinton was grateful for Gerster’s words, offering pleasantries, a hug and even a photo taken by the former president.
“She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk,” Gerster wrote. “Now, I’m not one for signs but I think I’ll definitely take this one. So proud.”
The photo represents Clinton’s first appearance since her concession speech on Wednesday, during which she declared: “To all the little girls who are watching this: never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”
Gerster ended her post, which has been shared nearly 3,000 times, with a series of hashtags expressing support for the former presidential candidate: “#iamstillwithher #lovetrumpshate #keepfighting #lightfollowsdarkness.”
The photo has received thousands of comments, most expressing good wishes for the former candidate.
“I wish I could give her a hug and thank her personally,” wrote one supporter. “And apologize for the rest of our country.”hi.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/10/hillary-clinton-hike-new-york-after-election-donald-trump
An upstate New York woman, hoping to take her mind off of the US election results with a hike through the woods of Westchester County, bumped into another woman on Thursday with a presumably similar notion: Hillary Clinton.
Margot Gerster of White Plains wrote on Facebook that after “feeling so heartbroken since yesterday’s election”, she hoped to relax by taking her young daughter and her dog hiking on Thursday.
“I decided to take them to one of favorite places in Chappaqua,” Gerster wrote, the Westchester hamlet that the Clintons call home. “We were the only ones there and it was so beautiful and relaxing.”
As Gerster was ending her hike, however, she ran into an unexpected couple on the trail: the former secretary of state and her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
“I heard a bit of rustling coming towards me and as I stepped into the clearing there she was, Hillary Clinton and Bill with their dogs doing exactly the same thing as I was,” Gerster wrote. “I got to hug her and talk to her and tell her that one of my most proudest moments as a mother was taking [my daughter] with me to vote for her.”
Clinton was grateful for Gerster’s words, offering pleasantries, a hug and even a photo taken by the former president.
“She hugged me and thanked me and we exchanged some sweet pleasantries and then I let them continue their walk,” Gerster wrote. “Now, I’m not one for signs but I think I’ll definitely take this one. So proud.”
The photo represents Clinton’s first appearance since her concession speech on Wednesday, during which she declared: “To all the little girls who are watching this: never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”
Gerster ended her post, which has been shared nearly 3,000 times, with a series of hashtags expressing support for the former presidential candidate: “#iamstillwithher #lovetrumpshate #keepfighting #lightfollowsdarkness.”
The photo has received thousands of comments, most expressing good wishes for the former candidate.
“I wish I could give her a hug and thank her personally,” wrote one supporter. “And apologize for the rest of our country.”hi.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/10/hillary-clinton-hike-new-york-after-election-donald-trump
#USELECTIONS - The Electoral College Is Hated by Many. So Why Does It Endure?
In November 2000, as the Florida recount gripped the nation, a newly elected Democratic senator from New York took a break from an upstate victory tour to address the possibility that Al Gore could wind up winning the popular vote but losing the presidential election.
She was unequivocal. “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people,” Hillary Clinton said, “and to me that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”
Sixteen years later, the Electoral College is still standing, and Mrs. Clinton has followed Mr. Gore as the second Democratic presidential candidate in modern history to be defeated by a Republican who earned fewer votes, in his case by George W. Bush.
In her concession speech on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton did not mention the popular vote, an omission that seemed to signal her desire to encourage a smooth and civil transition of power after such a divisive election. But her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, wasted little time highlighting her higher vote total than Donald J. Trump’s in introducing her.
And the disparity left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Democrats, whose party won the country’s national popular vote for the third consecutive election but no longer controls any branch of government.
“If we really subscribe to the notion that ‘majority rules,’ then why do we deny the majority their chosen candidate?” said Jennifer M. Granholm, a former governor of Michigan.
Mr. Trump himself has been critical of the Electoral College in the past. On the eve of the 2012 election, he called it “a disaster for a democracy” in a Twitter post. Now, after months of railing against what he called a “rigged” election, he has become the unlikely beneficiary of an electoral system that allows a candidate to win the race without winning over the most voters.
None of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters have gone so far as to suggest that the popular vote tally should delegitimize Mr. Trump’s victory, and the popular vote margin in Tuesday’s election was in fact narrower than the one that separated Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore in 2000.
But the results are already renewing calls for electoral reform. “I personally would like to see the Electoral College eliminated entirely,” said David Boies, who represented Mr. Gore in the Florida recount in 2000. “I think it’s a historical anomaly.”
Defenders of the system argue that it reduces the chances of daunting nationwide recounts in close races, a scenario that Gary L. Gregg II, an Electoral College expert at the University of Louisville, said would be a “national nightmare.”
A variety of factors informed the creation of the Electoral College, which apportions a fixed number of votes to different states based on the size of their populations. The founding fathers sought to ensure that residents in states with smaller populations were not ignored. And in an era that predated mass media and even political parties, they were concerned that average Americans would lack enough information about the candidates to make intelligent choices. So informed “electors” would stand in for them.
Above all, some historians point to the critical role that slavery played in the formation of the system. Southern delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, most prominently James Madison of Virginia, were concerned that their constituents would be outnumbered by Northerners. The Three-Fifths Compromise, however, allowed states to count each slave as three-fifths of a person — enough, at the time, to ensure a Southern majority in presidential races.
On social media Wednesday, some drew connections between that history and what they perceived as an imbalance in the Electoral College that favors Republicans.
“Electoral college will forever tip balance to rural/conservative/“white”/older voters — a concession to slave-holders originally,” the author Joyce Carol Oates wrote on Twitter.
To its critics, the Electoral College is a relic that violates the democratic principle of one person, one vote, and distorts the presidential campaign by encouraging candidates to campaign only in the relatively small number of contested states.
“I think it is intolerable for democracy,” said George C. Edwards III, a political-science professor at Texas A&M University and the author of a book on the Electoral College. “I can’t think of any justification for it, and any justification that is offered doesn’t bear scrutiny.”
But calls to change the system, which would require a constitutional amendment, are likely to fall on deaf ears with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.
And though there was some momentum for reform after Mr. Gore’s defeat, it dissipated after Mr. Bush and Barack Obama won both the popular and electoral votes in 2004, 2008 and 2012.
Some states have discussed a possibility that would not necessarily require amending the Constitution: jettisoning the winner-takes-all system, in which a single candidate is awarded all of a state’s electoral votes — regardless of the popular vote — and instead apportioning them to reflect the breakdown of each state’s popular vote. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, already do this. But even that approach could face challenges, said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School.
For reformers, the best hope may lie in the so-called National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to award all of their respective electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in a given election. So far, 10 states and the District of Columbia have joined the agreement. But it will only go into effect when enough states have signed on to guarantee that the winner of the popular vote will win the election.
For now, it seems, any change still remains a far-off notion.
“I am very mad at James Madison,” said former Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “But I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it.”