Sorry, Trump supporters, but "and" means "and"

A characteristic that has always loomed large in defenses of Donald Trump is incoherence. It is even more prominent than usual of late. Apparently, even law school professors who are partisans of Mr. Trump are being driven to it.

We often hear it claimed even now that "collusion" with Russian interference in the 2016 election wouldn't have been a crime. When "collusion" is becoming an accessory to espionage by an unfriendly foreign power against the U.S. Secretary of State, it's not a crime? Really?

Not only was Mr. Trump NOT cleared of involvement of conspiracy with the Russians to commit such espionage as he and his supporters often falsely claim, but he has dug himself deeper into that same hole by abusing the power of his office to engage the governments of Ukraine and China (another unfriendly government with whom the president is currently engaged in an ill-advised trade war!) to interfere in the 2020 election by digging up dirt on a domestic political rival. Perhaps that is not a crime, though it certainly is a violation of his oath of office (one of many of which he has been guilty since assuming the presidency).

And here's the thing: the Constitution goes out of its way to specify that impeachment is meant to be a remedy for situations in which an official is guilty of "high crimes AND misdemeanors." Now, it's true that "misdemeanor" is a legal term for a crime that doesn't rise to the level of a felony. But the word also is a generic term for ANY misdeed, whether technically illegal or not. Basic English grammar tells us that if the Founders had intended to use the word "misdemeanors" as a subset of "crimes." they would not have used both words distinguished from one another by the word "and."

Constitutionally. it is simply not necessary to be an impeachable offense that behavior violates the law. I hate to break it to you Trumpsters, but "it's not a crime" isn't a defense against impeachment.

Of late, in a variation of the logically incoherent "but Hillary..." and "but Obama..." defense for the behavior of our most corrupt president that has been so common in the Age of Trump, the president's defenders are suggesting that if it's wrong for members of the Senate- who would sit as the jurors in an impeachment trial- to express an opinion about the guilt or innocence of the president before the trial even begins, it's also wrong for members of the House to do so, since they are in effect members of the grand jury.

Now, there's actually a certain logic in this. In theory, grand and petit jurors alike ought to be impartial. Let's leave aside, for the moment, the incoherent argument that the process is stacked against the president and due process is not being observed because the president is not being allowed representation in the deliberations of the House on impeachment. Suffice it to say that the defendant is neither represented by counsel nor involved in any other way in the deliberations of any grand jury, so the argument is indeed incoherent. Members of Congress certainly fill a role analogous to grand jurors in the case of the House and petit jurors in the case of the Senate when it comes to the impeachment process. But they are also officers of the government individually as well as collectively responsible for holding the Executive Branch accountable. It isn't practical to expect either to refrain from forming and even expressing opinions on matters which are being openly debated by the entire nation, and not confined to the post-trial deliberations of a jury of either kind. There is a good reason why we do not expect either representatives or senators to recuse themselves if they have been exposed to pre-trial evidence in such a case. In fact, if they had paid such little attention as not to have formed a preliminary opinion, that in itself would raise eyebrows.

But there is a difference between the process of determining whether there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offense has been committed (the job of the House) and of determining whether a defendant is, in fact, guilty of it. To expect members of either house not to have an opinion would be not only unreasonable but ridiculous. The most (and least) that we can expect from either is that they be open to being convinced by the weight of the evidence that they are wrong. And it would be a little hard for the members of the body charged with initiating the process to refrain from having an opinion about whether the process should be initiated before initiating it.

In short, the partisans of Mr. Trump are playing a pretty weak hand. It isn't necessary for something to be a crime to fit the constitutional standard for being an impeachable offense, and the wording of the relatively brief discussion of the matter in the Constitution makes that crystal clear.  As always, the behavior of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or anyone else fails to excuse the behavior of Donald Trump, and to bring it up is simply an attempt to sidetrack the discussion into irrelevant matters. No, Mr. Trump is not being denied due process of law by being denied rights which even defendants in criminal cases are not accorded in the equivalent stage of the process, and while open-mindedness is certainly ideal in members of both the House and the Senate, the political nature of the case makes it difficult if not impossible for the members of either body not to enter the process with opinions on the matter and at least some suspicion of guilt would seem to be necessary before the members of the House to bother initiating the process.

This is an odd moment in the political saga of the United States. There is no way in which Donald Trump will not go down in history as the least-fit man ever to occupy the presidency, and it's hard to see how the reputation for corruption and unethical behavior which he has carried with him his entire adult life will not be seen by posterity as justified by his behavior as president. I continue to see his acquittal by a partisan Republican Senate as being just as inevitable as his impeachment by a partisan Democratic House. The "Watergate effect" isn't kicking in here; the Republicans both inside and outside of Congress seem unaffected by the prospect of being judged harshly by history and eventually by their constituents for their stubborn and often implausible defense of a man posterity will remember in a considerably less than favorable light.

Yet here we are. The Democrats will doubtless impeach, the Republicans will doubtless acquit, the president will find his default position as a victim being unfairly picked on by malicious enemies reinforced, and whether the whole business strengthens or weakens his extremely weak position going into the 2020 campaign remains to be seen. Certainly, it will energize his base; that it will further turn the American people as a whole against him is anything but certain, though I doubt that it will gain him much additional sympathy.

As I've maintained from the beginning, the outcome of any Trump impeachment is pretty much preordained. Other than creating a benchmark historical event in the dolorous story of the bizarre, aberrant, and accidental Trump presidency, the whole business is unlikely to achieve very much. History will have the faults of the Trump presidency thrown into even sharper relief, and unless the Democrats go off the deep end and nominate a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren or someone else who can somehow pull off the difficult task of making Donald Trump look a great deal more credible than he does now, our most unpopular president will go down to a resounding defeat in the popular vote and likely in the electoral college next year. And the Republican Party, together with its elected officials, is going to look very, very foolish in the pages of history for remaining so passionately and firmly committed to him.

But in any case, let's make no mistake: the misdeeds of which Mr. Trump is charged (and of many of which he appears almost certainly to be guilty) are indeed misdeeds; do, in fact, rise to the Constitutional level of being impeachable offenses; and are misdeeds of which history will almost certainly convict him even if the Senate does not.