Pelosi said something to the fact that the impeachment process is not political. Since your are a "former prosecutor", please explain the House vote , if it was not political?
It is been stated that if the articles of impeachment makes it to the Senate the most likely outcome will be an acquittal with the vote following Party lines. If true, seems pretty poltical to me. How can one group look at the data and say it was a crime and another group look at the same data and say, no it wasn't.
Explain the proper use of "executive privilege" by a President when it comes to responding to witness and document requests from House committees.
imo, Trump is not a very good President. I dislike his tweets, rants, and attacks. Not sure with what is known it is enough to remove Trump from office. Or is the data showing he is not very good at politics.
Thanks. Clearly I need to be more specific in what I was thinking about when I started:
First,
impeachment is a legal action that has political aspects. I readily acknowledge that. It can be used for political advantage, but I think largely unsuccessfully (see, Clinton impeachment). It was, in my view, the
political aspects that delayed the process, rather than the strength of the
legal case. If the legal case is strong enough, it should overcome the political issue (although that seems less likely in the present circumstance). In that regard, it is unimportant to me whether the Senate does its duty with regard to the present articles.
Second,
impeachment is not about crime. It is fundamentally about abuse of office. I could spend (and have spent) considerable time belaboring this point (and have on other threads). That is, in fact, why I titled this thread as I did: impeachment and indictment are different processes, with different considerations. But, I readily acknowledge that the terminology of the impeachment provisions of the Constitution are confusing. It requires a lot of historical context to explain it. In short, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" really didn't mean "crimes" in the literal sense. Treason, Bribery and High Crimes and Misdemeanors are all
offenses against the polity, abuses of the "high office" to which one has been elevated.
Third, I included in my comments that I was a prosecutor, not as a boast, but, as
Mycroft pointed out, because I come to the question with a different mindset. I look at the law, and the facts, and puzzle out how they fit together in the circumstances. It is an intellectual exercise.
With that in mind, I will give some of my views:
In charging documents (impeachment or indictment) there are general categories (charge, article), and specifics (counts). There are two "Articles" presently, but several paragraphs that allege specifics. E.g., one could be charged/impeached for "Bribery", with several specific "incidents" that fall under the same heading. "Emoluments" could fall under that category, as it involves private gain from the public trust.
The 2 Impeachment Articles do not allege "crimes" in the statutory sense,
because they shouldn't. Indeed, if one looks at the history of impeachment in the United States you'll learn that they don't. Occasionally there is an overlap (as with "bribery" or "perjury") which causes confusion, but the gravamen of the charge is abuse of office, not a technical legal crime - which has to be adjudicated separately, as the Constitution explicitly states.