Should Impeachment Hearings Broaden Their Scope?

November 19, 2019

By Stephen Scott Crockett

Congressional Democrats should not keep the scope of the Trump impeachment hearings limited to just his misdeeds around his attempts to extort Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 American presidential election. While this should be the first subject examined and voted upon, there are other important areas of corruption and lawlessness that need to be included that go to the very heart of the American political system and historical traditions.

It is easy to understand why Congressional Democrats want to keep this quick and simple for political reasons. However, protecting our American democratic system requires more and that should override the short-term political considerations.

Of course, these impeachment hearings can be done in stages. Each subject addressed can be voted on separately and sent to the Senate for trial separately. This approach can let both the House and Senate act on other important issues during the impeachment process such as funding the federal government.

It is important to note that the House has been passing many bills, but almost none are getting votes in the Senate because of Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Since very little work is getting done in the Senate, they have time for multiple impeachment trials. McConnell has made statements that seem to imply that he would seek to make each trial very brief anyway.

Even as the impeachment inquiry might be expanded, the House and the Senate can continue to conduct business. However, given that Mitchell McConnell has fashioned himself the “grim reaper” who buries legislation passed by the House, the Senate should have more ample time to conduct an impeachment inquiry.

For example, the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution needs to be addressed by Congress in these impeachment proceedings. Federal courts seem to be avoiding the issue intentionally by refusing legal standing to most litigants suing Trump in regards to his self-profiteering. And more importantly, those lawsuits are civil actions, not criminal ones. What is needed is to hold Trump accountable for his relentless violation of the Emoluments Clause and his other acts of betrayal of the presidency.

The US Constitution needs to be enforced when it comes to accepting money or other things of value including foreign government actions that only advance the personal political needs of the President from foreign governments. Our nation needs to be protected from presidents violating the Emoluments Clause to advance their personal financial interests as well as their personal political needs. Personal political needs and personal financial interests of any president can never be permitted to come before our national interests, our national security or the foreign policy of the United States of America.

The only enforcement mechanism provided by the US Constitution against violations of the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution is impeachment.

It is vital to protecting our federal government from the influence of foreign governments and other potentially corrupting business practices for impeachment hearings to cover Trump’s emoluments violations. Trump refuses to correct his behavior. He essentially just ignores the US Constitution whenever it restricts his money-making activities.

We cannot let this become a Constitutional precedent for future Presidents.

Another subject that possibly needs to be addressed is his White House’s numerous legal claims that Congress cannot provide oversight to the Executive Branch of the federal government. They are extreme. They go against the entire checks and balances system designed by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution.

It is vital to preserve Constitutional protections against any one branch of government becoming supreme over the other two. The greatest danger comes when that branch is the Executive branch.

Our Founding Fathers understood that when the Constitution was written. This issue was at the core of the American Revolution. It is at the very essence of the American nation and our system of government.

In our system of government, we cannot have an all-powerful Chief Executive. The genius of the Constitution is that the power of each branch of our government checks the power of the other two to preserve our individual American freedoms.

If these extreme Trump White House legal claims go unchecked, our American democracy will not survive.

Stephen Scott Crockett is a former Democratic Talk Radio host, former Delaware and Maryland State Senate staffer, a small business owner and political activist who now lives in Fayetteville, Tennessee