They haven't fully established that she even WAS covert. The Libby trial is about PERJURY not outing anyone.
They haven't fully established that she even WAS covert. The Libby trial is about PERJURY not outing anyone.
say what? wrote:
What if we elected someone in 2008 only to find out in 2010 that he murdered someone? I'm not talking about some sort of war-power related action. I mean suppose a sitting president picked up a gun one day and randomly blew someone away. Do we consider this murder to be "not committed in his capacity as president"? If so, then would those same constitutional scholars would have to say we could not impeach him.
Ridiculous of course. Just, I think, as it would be to say that Clinton's perjury is not impeachable. When you are president, EVERY action is done in capacity as president. Clinton lied under oath while he was president.
You raise a very valid point. The Impeachment power vested in Congress is somewhat ambiguous. It is hard to imagine a president not being impeached in the scenario you describe.
What the framers were trying to do was vest in the Congress the power of Impeachment in such a way that the president or other high officers couldn't be impeached, convicted and thrown from office for political or trivial reasons. I think they did that pretty well in the language they settled on in Article II. But, ultimately, the House can Impeach a president if it wants to. The House could impeach Bush right now. There is nothing Constitutionally that would prevent the House from doing so. They could accuse the president of a crime, draft articles of impeachment and vote to impeach. The Senate would then try the president and, if they convicted him by a 2/3rd majority, he would be removed from office. No one could stop them, not even the Supreme Court.
The framers did raise the bar for conviction in the Senate, not only with the 2/3rd majority required for conviction, but also by requiring per Article II that the Senators take an Oath (presumably to ensure they are adequately weighing the gravity of the situation and will act as impartial jurors to the best of their ability): "the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation."
So, in your scenario, the House would almost certainly vote to impeach a president if he committed a murder that was completely unconnected to his office (say he offed his wife in a fit of jealous rage) but while in office, for no other reason than the sheer seriousness of the crime of murder. That is ok, because it could not be argued that the House was going after the president for purely political reasons (one would hope in this scenario the president's party persuades him to resign).
The framers could not and did not try to envision every possible scenario where the Congress would try to impeach a president. The Constitution grants the Congress the power, but in such a way that it is unlikely to be abused.
Unlike the Andrew Johnson impeachment, the Clinton one is a tough call. He perjured himself while in office, but only because he was compelled to give deposition in a civil case stemming from an alleged transgression he committed before becoming president. Experts were divided on this, but I came down on the side that he should not have been impeached. Prosecuted after leaving office, perhaps, but not impeached.
As it turned out, perhaps Impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate represented how close a call it was and in some strange way the system worked.
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