On not being there by @BloggersRUs

On not being there

by Tom Sullivan

Still image from "Being There" (1979)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday afternoon that if the House impeaches President Donald Trump, the Senate would have “no choice” on holding a trial. McConnell (R-Ky.) told NPR that “if the House were to act, the Senate immediately goes into a trial.”

So he says as of Friday.

McConnell's statement is eyebrow-raising for his suggesting this time he chooses to uphold norms rather than break them. Because the normal order of constitutional business in 2016, one would have thought, was the President of the United States (Barack Obama, you recall) had the power "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" to appoint "Judges of the supreme Court." McConnell chose not to uphold his "Advice and Consent" end of the constitutional bargain in the case of Merrick Garland. Until he did that, we all thought the Senate was obliged to exercise the power conferred by Constitution. McConnell opted out.

He can still choose to:

“Some people read the Constitution’s language that the Senate ‘shall have the sole power to try impeachments’ to be a mandate, requiring the Senate to conduct a trial based on the articles of impeachment approved in the House,” explained Michael Gerhardt, Burton Craige distinguished professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina School of Law. “In practice, the Senate has always felt obliged to do something when it formally received impeachment articles from the House, including holding a streamlined process for President Clinton when it was apparent conviction and removal were highly unlikely.”

“As a practical matter,” he continued over email, “the Majority Leader will have substantial discretion on the process, if any, he fashions in response to the articles.”

The practice began after details of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office discussion with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, leaked to the news media, leading to questions of whether the president had released classified information, according to multiple current and former officials. The White House was particularly upset when the news media reported that Mr. Trump had called James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, a “nut job” during that same meeting, according to current and former officials.

The White House had begun restricting access to information after initial leaks of Mr. Trump’s calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. But the conversation with Mr. Lavrov and Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, prompted tighter restrictions.

President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter.

The comments, which have not been previously reported, were part of a now-infamous meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which Trump revealed highly classified information that exposed a source of intelligence on the Islamic State. He also said during the meeting that firing FBI Director James B. Comey the previous day had relieved “great pressure” on him.

“[I]t should never be allowed, what’s happened to this president…. What these guys are doing – Democrats – are doing to this country is a disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it – maybe legally, through the courts.”