Conservatives Supporting Trump Impeachment

Once this latest effort to subvert the Constitution and American democracy for his own personal benefit was corroborated by numerous other witnesses (including a million dollar contributor to Mr. Trump's inaugural gala), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally had had enough of Mr. Trump's unconstitutional behavior and authorized an impeachment investigation of Mr. Trump.

For months, many Congressional Democrats had been pressing Ms. Pelosi to begin such proceedings, in large part based on abuses of power as described in the report released by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. So, too, had a growing number of principled Republicans, many more of whom likely would have agreed to that effort as well, but did not have the political courage to speak out publicly, hoping to stay "under the radar" until Mr. Trump leaves office.

What follows is the reasoning of some of those principled Republicans, conservatives, and evangelicals, who have argued publicly that Mr. Trump's actions while in office have risen to a level that justify impeachment and conviction:

Congressman Justin Amash (R - Mich): "My job is to defend the Constitution"

When it comes to the small number of conservatives in the US House who have banded together under the banner of the "Freedom Caucus", we rarely have had anything positive to say about them. Their intransigence is what caused virtually no worthwhile legislation to come out of the House between 2010 and 2018 and is what gave GOP Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan gray hairs and ulcers. The 2011 economic "grand bargain" between Speaker Boehner and President Obama was derailed because Mr. Boehner wouldn't stand up to these bullies.

(Amash image from Time.com)

"Under our Constitution, the president 'shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors'. While 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors' is not defined, the context implies conduct that violates the public trust.

Contrary to {Attorney General} Barr's portrayal, Mueller's report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.

Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.

Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch's jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law-the foundation of liberty-crumbles."

Christianity Today Magazine: "The Facts in this Instance are Unambiguous"

The Christian evangelical magazine "Christianity Today" was founded by the Reverend Billy Graham in the 1950's and remains a widely-read publication in the conservative evangelical community. Among the positions the magazine has taken in the past was their 1998 support for the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton.

Following Mr. Trump's impeachment on December 18, Christianity Today's editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, called for Mr. Trump's removal from office, writing the following:

"We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath."

"The facts in this instance are unambiguous: the president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president's political opponents. That is not only a violation of the constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral."

(image from christianitytoday.org)

" To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump's immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don't reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation's leader doesn't really matter in the end?"

Amen, Mr. Galli. Our fear is that it may be too late: the love-fest for Mr. Trump in the evangelical community over the past three years already has severely damaged that community's reputation in the eyes of many outside it.

Former Judge Andrew Napolitano: "Criminal and Impeachable"

Former New Jersey judge Andrew Napolitano is a legal analyst who appears regularly on Fox News. A traditional (though more extreme in many ways) conservative, Mr. Napolitano has written extensively on a favorite theme of conservatives: what they believe to be the continuing unconstitutional power-grab by the federal government at the expense of individual freedoms. But unlike the many conservatives on Fox who have become Trump apologists, Mr. Napolitano sees Donald Trump's behavior as "both criminal and impeachable".

Mr. Napolitano believes that the Mueller report revealed impeachable offenses and that the initial White House-released transcript of the Trump phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky showed that Mr. Trump was guilty of violating campaign finance law, bribery, and intimidating witnesses.

What follows include excerpts from an opinion piece by Mr. Napolitano, as reported in an Ocotber 3, 2019 USA Today article:

"The criminal behavior to which Trump has admitted {in his phone call to Ukrainian President Zelensky} is much more grave than anything alleged or unearthed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and much of what Mueller revealed was impeachable,"

(Nepolitano image from LA Times)

Though the president and his defenders have denied evidence of a "quid pro quo" in the phone call, Napolitano said that Trump's request for a "favor" after Zelensky spoke of his need for anti-tank missiles to continue fighting the Russians in eastern Ukraine was a "clear unmistakable inference" that approved military aid "would be held up until the favor was delivered."

"The favor he sought was dirt on Biden," Napolitano said.

Napolitano also said the "president need not have committed a crime in order to be impeached, but he needs to have engaged in behavior that threatens the constitutional stability of the United States or the rule of law as we have come to know it."

The judge decried Trump's verbal attacks on the whistleblower and "suggesting that the whistleblower and those who have helped him are spies and ought to be treated as spies were in 'the old days' (Trump's phrase) - that is, by hanging."

He called Trump's "allusions to violence are palpably dangerous" and said they "will give cover to crazies who crave violence, as other intemperate words of his have done."

And he said that Trump's retweet of a pastor's suggestion that impeachment could lead to civil war was "a dog whistle to the deranged."

Napolitano expressed shock that Trump would try to engage a country to interfere in the 2020 election immediately after Mueller's investigation, which outlined a "sweeping and systematic" Russian campaign to sway the 2016 election.

"Now he has attempted in one phone call to bring the Ukrainian government into the 2020 election! Does he understand the laws he has sworn to uphold?" Napolitano asked. "It was to remedy just such reckless, constitutionally destructive behavior that impeachment was intended."

Former Senator Jeff Flake (R - AZ): "If there ever was a time to put country over party, it is now."

Following the impeachment of Donald Trump by the U.S. House of Representatives, conservative Jeff Flake penned an open letter to his former Republican colleagues in the U.S. Senate. Excerpts of his letter include the following:

"…Mindful of the base human instincts that we all possess, the founders of our constitutional system designed its very architecture to curb excesses of power. Those curbs are especially important when the power is wielded by a president who denies reality itself and calls his behavior not what it is, but 'perfect'. "

"… there are members of our party denying objective reality by repeating the line that "the president did nothing wrong." My colleagues, the danger of an untruthful president is compounded when an equal branch follows that president off the cliff, into the abyss of unreality and untruth."

"…My simple test for all of us: What if President Barack Obama had engaged in precisely the same behavior? I know the answer to that question with certainty, and so do you. You would have understood with striking clarity the threat it posed, and you would have known exactly what to do."

"…But what is indefensible is echoing House Republicans who say that the president has not done anything wrong. He has.

(Flake image from Huffpost.com)

Nearly all of you condemned the president's behavior during the 2016 campaign. Nearly all of you refused to campaign with him. You knew then that doing so would be wrong - would be a stain on your reputation and the standing of the Republican Party, and would do lasting damage to the conservative cause.

Ask yourself today: Has the president changed his behavior? Has he grown in office? Has the mantle of the presidency altered his conduct? The answer is obvious."

"…You're on a big stage now. Please don't accept an alternate reality that would have us believe in things that obviously are not true, in the service of executive behavior that we never would have encouraged and a theory of executive power that we have always found abhorrent.

If there ever was a time to put country over party, it is now. And by putting country over party, you might just save the Grand Old Party before it's too late."