House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) entered into full meltdown mode this week.
After it became clear that the House’s impeachment case was decidedly failing before the Senate, Pelosi launched an attack on the president’s counsel, even going so far as to suggest that they be disbarred.
Panic Mode
Pelosi’s comments came on Thursday before Capitol Hill reporters.
“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think they made the case. I think they disgraced themselves terribly in terms of their violation of what our Constitution is about and what a president’s behavior should be.”
Here, Pelosi was especially taking aim at Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar, and a member of the president’s counsel. Dershowitz’s main argument against the impeachment of President Donald Trump has been that it would be wrong because the president neither engaged in a crime nor committed an offense akin to the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard.
But, one line from the argument which he presented on Wednesday evening, has backfired. “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.
Outraged
Pelosi, in response to Dershowitz, accused him and the other members of the president’s counsel of trying to “dismantle the constitution.”
“Some of them are even lawyers,” Pelosi said. “Imagine that you would say — ever, of any president, no matter who he or she is or whatever party — if the president thinks that his or her presidency … is good for the country, then any action is justified — including encouraging a foreign government to have an impact on our elections.”
She continued: “[That] is exactly what our Founders were opposed to — and they feared. I don’t think they made the case. I think they disgraced themselves terribly in terms of their violation of what our Constitution is about and what a president’s behavior should be.”
To be fair to Professor Dershowitz here, this one line which Democrats are harping on was taken entirely out of context. In a series of tweets, an op-ed piece, and television appearances, Dershowitz has since explained that he “never said a president could do anything to get re-elected.”
Protector of the Constitution Pelosi
Even if Pelosi did have a legitimate point — which she doesn’t because it was based on a misunderstanding of Dershowitz’s argument — she immediately undermined herself with the following piece of “reasoning”: “[Trump] will not be acquitted. You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. And you don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation.”
If anything around here is unconstitutional, it would be this.
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