SCHIFF, HOROWITZ, IMPEACHMENT FOLLIES
Beware of those who promise to secure rights by denying them.
The clamoring likes of Rep. Andrew Schiff, Conservative Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy, the Washington Post’s Deanna Paul, Professor Steve Vladeck, and others similarly ill-advised — the “Constitutional Deniers” — are intellectually and historically errant to suggest that the Constitution has no place in congressional proceedings and processes – especially impeachment proceedings.
These Constitutional Deniers use the hollow argument that impeachment is not a criminal process, therefore the Sixth Amendment does not apply. While it is a political process, impeachment is shorn more in the cloth of a criminal process than that of a civil proceeding.
The arguments to the contrary are devoid of even a modicum of intellectual credibility or historic reflection. The very fact that “high crimes and misdemeanors” are the entry point to begin the impeachment process seems to have evaded the Constitutional Deniers and the witless epigones of the Democratic Party. Federalist 65 recognizes that the impeachment process is a matter of “innocence or guilt” — alien terms in a civil proceeding.
The great debate about whether the FBI spied on the Trump campaign continues. The question is why there is still any argument. The newly released report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz shows that by any definition the FBI did indeed spy.
The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau’s use of what is called a CHS (a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant) and a UCE (an undercover employee, or a secret agent) to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed “high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
Comments are closed.
