The trial is currently scheduled to begin the week of Feb. 8. Senators will be officially sworn in as jurors today, but before that Paul intends to make the argument that an impeachment trial of a former president is unconstitutional.
"Republican leadership has made a deal. And wants to make a deal with Schumer, to allow a Democrat to preside over this hearing," Paul told Beck, referring to Monday's announcement that Senate president pro tempore Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will preside over the trial, not Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. "But my point is, if you're impeaching the president, the chief justice needs to be there. But if the person is no longer president, he's a private citizen. It is an impeachment."
"If you can't impeach him any longer, we're doing something that's never been to a president before. It's going to divide the country further. It's a huge mistake."
Paul speculated that Chief Justice Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have had conversations about the impeachment trial, suggesting that Roberts may have told Schumer he will not preside over the impeachment trial because Donald Trump is no longer the president, and therefore Roberts is not constitutionally obligated to do so.
"It goes to the very nature and legitimacy of this thing. With John Roberts not showing up, the chief justice not being here," Paul said. "I think this is an illegitimate process, from top to bottom."
Former President Trump was the first president to be impeached twice and would be the first ex-president to be tried by the Senate after he has already left office. The uniqueness of Trump's situation has triggered a legal and scholarly debate over whether the Senate has the constitutional power to try Trump after he has left office.
Many Republicans like Paul argue the Senate does not have such power. George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley, former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, and other respected lawyers and judges have argued the Senate trial is unconstitutional. Still others like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) argue that the trial is constitutional and that the impeachment power to remove a civil officer from office and disqualify him from future office are separate powers, meaning the Senate can still bar Trump from running for re-election in 2024.
Paul predicted that his maneuver to object to the impeachment proceedings will fail but was adamant that he still needed to stand up for what he believes is right.
"Today, if I don't say anything, Republicans and Democrats will agree by unanimous consent to install a Democrat to preside over this proceeding. An illegitimate proceeding with an illegitimate Democrat overseeing it. So I'm going to object to that and call out the double standard," Paul said.
"And I don't think we'll win," he added. "The Democrats will win. But I'll force them to vote on it. My hope is I get 40 Republicans to vote with me."
"If I do, that shows they don't have the votes to impeach at that point. And so basically, the trial is over," Paul said. "They can go through the manipulations, but if 40 of us vote that this is an unconstitutional use of the impeachment power, then they're done. They can do whatever they want. But we will show them. If I don't do this, our leadership will acquiesce with Schumer. There will be no votes. And they will go through the whole trial as if this sham is actually a real impeachment. So I do say, we do to have to fight them."
Democrats Press Ahead On Impeachment
To the surprise of nobody, Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer seems determined to press ahead with a trial on the unprecedented, most likely unconstitutional impeachment of former President Trump.
He’s insisting that you can impeach someone who’s no longer in office, even though impeachment exists as an action to remove someone from office. It’s possible that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts might refuse even to preside over it if he cares about the Constitution (sadly, that’s an open question.) Here are some more details on the confusing issues that are only now being debated because, in all of American history, this is the first time Congress has ever pulled anything this stupid, at least in the impeachment field.
THEY ARE TRYING TO LINCH FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP, WHAT HAPPEN TO THE RULE OF LAW AND THE CONSTITUTION. THE DEMOCRATS MAKE THE LAW AS THEY GO...THEY THINK THEY ARE ABOVE THE LAW...NO ONE IS!
Sen. Mitch McConnell is pressing to delay any trial to February, to give Trump’s people a fair chance to mount a defense, something they didn’t get to do during the rushed House vote, which is another reason why this is totally bogus (another is that he was impeached for allegedly inciting the Capitol riot with a speech that a federal investigation has already proven took place after the rioters had already started planning their assault.) Schumer will likely oppose that since trying to impeach a President who’s been gone for five weeks might look five times dumber than trying to impeach one who’s been gone for one week.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas tried (probably futilely) to inject some common sense into the Senate proceedings by pointing out, “We won’t be doing any confirmations, we won’t be doing any COVID-19 relief, we won’t be doing anything else other than impeaching a person who’s not even President.” Unfortunately, we live in a time when trying to inject common sense into the Senate is like trying to give a vaccination shot to a Pet Rock.
Reactions To Biden's Keystone Pipeline Decision
Multiple union leaders are joining Canadian officials in expressing their anger over President Biden’s executive order killing the Keystone Pipeline project (along with thousands of union jobs) and reneging on an expensive agreement with Canada, just to appease some radical green activists and “undo Trump’s legacy.”
Never having run a business (or done anything other than warm a government seat for 47 years), Biden doesn’t understand that when a new boss comes in, he doesn’t arbitrarily cancel every project his predecessor set in motion, especially not those that represent a major investment and a number of binding outside contracts.
Unfortunately, he’s also surrounded himself with other people whose experience is entirely in politics, which explains the clueless response to the anger by his Transportation Secretary pick, Pete Buttigieg (whose experience includes being mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and nothing involving transportation or oil.) In a stunning "learn to code" moment, Buttigieg brushed off concerns about all the lost union jobs, assuring the newly unemployed pipeline workers that with Biden’s coming climate initiatives, they can just find “different” jobs.
This Administration is only four days old, and I’m already seeing a lot of people who need to find different jobs.
Delay
Speaking of the mindless reversal of all Trump policies, even those nobody wants reversed: Biden put a delay of up to 60 days on an HHS directive that was to have taken effect Friday, requiring community health centers to charge low-income patients the acquisition price for insulin and EpiPens. Question for Biden voters: did you support him because you wanted higher medical bills?
This is part of a general freeze/review on all Trump policies, apparently to ensure they aren’t evil or something. Although why anyone would think a measure to help provide low-cost insulin to poor diabetes patients should be put on hold is beyond me. That’s taking mindless partisanship to the level of psychotic partisanship.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)
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