Two Presidents
This has been a consequential week for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
In the case of Biden, House Republicans on Wednesday, by a party-line vote of 221-to-212, opened a formal inquiry into whether Biden should be impeached. This inquiry is a response by House Republicans to Trump’s desire for revenge and retribution.
In the case of Trump, a Supreme Court decision this week brought him one step closer to a determination by a jury in Washington D.C. about whether he is criminally liable for his lead role in the attempted 2020 presidential coup and the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol.
>> Biden: House Republicans Move Impeachment Inquiry Forward
The House Judiciary, House Oversight, and House Ways and Means Committees have been investigating President Biden and his son Hunter for nearly a year now, as House Republicans try to tie Hunter’s misdeeds to President Biden as grounds for impeachment.
After nearly a year of investigating, however, House Republicans have found no evidence for impeaching Biden. The formal impeachment inquiry they opened this week is apparently based on pure politics and zero Constitutional grounds for impeaching a President.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), a Trump acolyte and leader pushing for Biden’s impeachment, has a past record of moving (and failing) to impeach an executive branch official without any evidence.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) has even admitted the failure to find evidence. In response to a question in August about whether he could prove the impeachment claim, he said: “I sure hope so. And I do believe that there’s a lot of smoke and when there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
That’s Comer-speak for “We haven’t found any ‘fire.’” And none has been found since then.
The lack of evidence has been raised by some Republicans and even by reporters on Fox News. And, it’s documented in a new comprehensive analysis of the House Republican’s impeachment investigation, published in Just Security.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, for instance, said recently he doesn’t see evidence to justify an impeachment inquiry and Fox News reporter Peter Doocy said last week he doesn’t see any “concrete evidence” to justify impeachment.
House Republicans have shown that their evidence-free impeachment effort is nothing more than Trump-focused politics.
Extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has said the purpose of the impeachment is to ensure Democrats “lose big” at the next election. And, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) recently said he wants to give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” and say Biden has also been impeached.
>> Trump: Supreme Court Decision
On Monday, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to bypass the D.C. Court of Appeals and review a district court ruling in the criminal case against Trump on an expedited basis.
The principal issue is federal district court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that Trump does not have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts taken while President. Trump has appealed the ruling.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is also considering Trump’s appeal of Chutkan’s ruling, set an expedited timetable that requires briefs from both sides to be filed by the end of this year.
It is not clear whether the Court of Appeals will act before the Supreme Court or whether the Supreme Court will decide to take the case and bypass the Appeals Court.
Either way, it would appear that the case is on a fast track to the Supreme Court and lined up to potentially overcome Trump’s overriding approach when involved in litigation – “Delay, Delay, Delay.”
The purpose of the Special Counsel’s move in seeking Supreme Court review is to keep the case on target for its March 4, 2024 scheduled trial date. An expedited appeals process could be key to determining whether Trump is tried before the election or if the trial is postponed until after the election.
If Trump is able to delay the case beyond the 2024 election and then wins in November, he would, as a sitting President, be immune from any criminal prosecution while in office. Additionally, he could have his Attorney General drop the prosecution.
Voters, however, have the right to know before Election Day 2024 whether a major party presidential candidate is guilty of engaging in a federal crime to overturn a previous presidential election.
That’s why the Supreme Court action on Monday and the Court of Appeals action on Wednesday to expedite the court proceedings are so important.
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This is the last regular Wertheimer’s Political Report and Fred Note of 2023.
We’ll return on Thursday, January 4 (or sooner if something big happens).
Wishing You & Yours Happy Holidays!
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
