Donald Trump hasn’t actually been impeached admits Democrat lawyer in legal bombshell
DONALD TRUMP has not been impeached according to a top lawyer, who was part of the Democrats impeachment legal team.
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Last Wednesday Trump became only the third US President to lose an impeachment vote, when the House voted overwhelmingly to find him guilty of abusing the power of his office for political gain and for obstructing Congress in its investigations. However, Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi has not yet sent the impeachment articles to the Senate, fearing that the Republicans will not hold a fair trial and will simply acquit Trump of all charges.
Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor, insists that until those articles are sent to the Senate, the US President is guilty of nothing under the Constitution.
Writing in Bloomberg Mr Feldman said: “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the President.
“Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of a vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial.
“Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution.
“If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”
Political commentator Newt Gingrich added his voice to those questioning the legitimacy of the impeachment vote.
Appearing on Fox News on Friday, the former Republican Speaker of the House dismissed the whole impeachment process as a “joke”.
He said that as things stand the impeachment was “null and void and it hasn’t happened.”
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He added: “This is not a real impeachment. Nothing about it is real.
“The whole process from Adam Schiff’s secret meetings to Nadler’s trivially short Judiciary Committee meetings.
“This whole thing is a joke and it will go down in history as the impeachment that never was.”
He accused the Democrats of playing silly games that would end up damaging the party’s reputation, as well as making them look more and more narrowly political and partisan.
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Mr Gingrich was the Republican House Speaker in 1998, when then President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
He had been a leading advocate of the impeachment and was confident that the scandal would result in the Republican party winning up to 30 new seats in Congress at the November 1998 House elections.
The Democrats defied expectations and picked up five seats, although the Republicans maintained overall control of the House.
President Trump continued to insist that he had committed no crime and that he was the victim of a political witch hunt.
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On Thursday he told reporters: “I don’t feel like I’m being impeached because it’s a hoax, it’s a set-up, it’s a horrible thing they did.
“They [Democrats] happen to have a small majority and they took that small majority and they forced people.”
Recent polls suggest that the storm surrounding the impeachment proceedings have not politically damaged Trump.
A poll carried out by Reuters/Ipsos Core Political between December 9 and 10 found that the number of independent voters that “strongly disapproved” of his performance had fallen by 10 points from 48 percent to 38 percent.
At the same time the number of independent voters who think the President should be impeached has fallen three points from 41 percent to 38 percent.
Independent voters could play a decisive role in determining who wins the next Presidential election in 2020, as their votes will be pivotal in winning key swing states.