Topic category:  Constitution/Constitutional Crises

President Trump believes that he should have received enough electoral votes to be reelected and that he was impeached because his political enemies want to disqualify him from running again for President and the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives had the votes to impeach.

That impeachment is an egregious abuse of the impeachment power.

President Trump was impeached for allegedly inciting an insurrection, so a look back at the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President of the United States, is in order.

Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, had joined with Lincoln on a national unity ticket and succeeded to the Presidency upon the assassination of Lincoln.

The so-called Radical Republicans were not pleased with Johnson and succeeded in impeaching him, but, by one vote, not in having him removed from office.

Essentially the Radical Republicans tried to criminal political differences.

All twelve Democrat Senators voted to acquit and were joined by seven Republican Senators, including Senator James Grimes.

Grimes explained that "[h]owever  widely...[he]...differ[ed] with...Presidenrt [Johnson] and however deeply [he]...regretted...the differences between [the President] and the Congress," he could not "suffer [his] judgment of the law governing [the] case to be influenced by political considerations."

Grimes further explained that in voting whether or not to convict he was "acting in a judicial capacity, under conditions whose binding obligation can hardly be exceeded," and he felt constrained to "act according to the best of [his] ability and judgment."

Grimes described his duty this way: "If..the President is guilty, I must say so; if...the President is not guilty, I must say so."

To Grimes, President Johnson's "character as a statesman, his relations to political parties, his conduct as a citizen, his efforts at reconstruction, the exercise of his pardoning power, the character of his appointment, and the influences under which they were made" were "not before him."

How many Democrat Senators will do the same if the impeachment of President Trump for allegedly inciting an insurrection is tried after President Trump is out of office on January 20, 2021?

I think that the same number of Democrat Senators who voted to convict the impeached Democrat Presidents (Johnson and Bill Clinton) will vote to acquit former Republican President Trump if there is such a vote: zero.

I hope that I am wrong about that, but since Democrat Senator John Tester of Montana indicated that he wants to punch President Trump in the face and President-elect expressed his yearning to take President Trump behind the gym and beat him, I wonder if even one Democrat Senator would dare to prioritize the rule of law over political pandering.

Insurrection is "a violent uprising against an authority or government."

Perhaps a case can be made against Rudy Giuliani for calling for trial by combat, but President Trump expressly called for peaceful protest and he is entitled under the First Amendment to express his opinions on vote fraud.

Vote fraud hardly began in 2020. For example, in "Justice and Vote Fraud," published on October 27, 2008 in The Wall Street Journal, it was stated: "Vote fraud is real and can affect elections. In 2001, the Palm Beach Post reported that more than 5,600 people who voted in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election had names and data that perfectly matched a statewide list of suspected felons who were barred from voting. Florida was decided by about 500 votes."

In 2000, CBS (Dan Rather) called Florida for Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore before the polls had closed in the predominantly Republican Florida Panhandle. Surely that fake news suppressed the Florida Panhandle vote, and without it the winning margin of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush would have been greater, not narrower.

Media bias at work or a good faith mistake?

There was not that type of fake news on Election Day 2020, but there were widely reported suppression polls before that day, or were pollsters simply unfit?

Justice Robert Jackson eloquently stated that the Supreme Court is not final because it is infallible; it is infallible because it is final.

The Supreme Court actually is not infallible, of course, and neither are state certifications, particularly the ones that President Trump disputes. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court gave finality to state certifications, making the stealing of a state's electoral votes an issue outside the scope of Supreme Court review for Electoral College purposes.     

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.