Non-expert wrote:
> There I[s] no executive privilege over impeachment proceedings.
The writer made no such claim. He said that executive privilege (which benefitted every past president from Washington to Obama) can or ought to
be used to keep only specific items from being out in the open. The
impeachment can go ahead - but if it relies on information that wrecks
executive privilege moving forward, then they have nothing.
I'll break in here to point out an example of the lame-brain knowledge of
government by numerous "journalists" when, last year at a state dinner in Europe, Trump was seen talking with Putin for a minute off to the side. What I heard were people (kicked off by the ignorant Joy Behar) demanding that we
the people be told what they were talking about. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. Obama got his private talk time, and for good reason, and so did all the rest. If people think that nothing but negative results come from all such communications, then they have a problem. Judge by results.
Note, too, that during Obama's eight years as chief executive, no Republican or Republican-leaning long-termer (deep stater if you will) in the State or Defense Dep't leaked any personal conversation details between Obama and any other world leader or foreign high-ranking diplomat. That's because it was their job to maintain the ability of the executive branch communicate without worrying about any initiative or action being squashed because some ideologue or plain rat-screwer in the State or Defense Dep't leaks details in order to embarrass the executive and/or stop something he personally didn't want to see happen.
Would be interesting to see a scenario where this continues to spread, and then a Democrat gets into the White House in 2021 or 2025 and no world leader wants to discuss anything with the president unless off to the side in person, away from microphones. Not much good will get done. And during that stalemate, China and Russia can expand in the face of dispersed and uncoordinated opposition due to major western nations not having enough communications and coordination with each other.
All that thanks to short-sighted New Left Democrats all of a sudden thinking that private talks between presidents and other world leaders or diplomats
need to be scrutinized - just because they hate Trump.
> If there were, the object of the impeachment could stop the process.
Not really. That would mean you don't have much. But note that the
details of the phone call are out and if you think it's still not enough then
you don't have much. A better example would be if the House of Reps started impeachment proceedings against Roosevelt because of his talks with Joe Stalin and demanded to see the transcripts from Teheran and Yalta. Good luck. There
were indeed some bad things that came out of deals made there (without the Congress voting on them !), but that's what presidents can do as head of state with regard to foreign policy, settled or clarified by the USSC during the Washington Administration.
> Just like the president cannot pardon himself.
Sure - if he can (some say he can), then that needs to be put
into the Constitution. But then, the way around that is that
the successor would do the pardoning, unless we have an example of
a wrong-doer president being impeached and removed, and the VP
impeached and removed, as a pair, leaving a not very sympathetic
House Speaker as president and one unlikely to issue a pardon.
Oh, and that chain of succession starting with speaker as number three,
is not Constitutional, but no one has yet brought that to the USSC
to sort out.
> And you think you are a constitutional scholar.
I know quite a bit, even enough to acknowledge some realities I
don't like and previously challenged, something the Left is
unable to do. But as a "scholar" in this, I actually know more
than the alleged "Constitutional scholar" Obama ever did or will.
> You might want to re-think that claim.
Don't have any reason to, but it has been noticed that you
don't know much about it. Otherwise, to point to one thing,
you would have known something about "well regulated". It
helps to know these things, and what words mean and meant, which
fortunately in one ruling I really liked, Scalia insisted on
respecting the original intent of the word "search", which
lefty favorite JP Stevens ignored (but was fortunately in the
minority).
B. T.