The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #169121   Message #4090018
Posted By: Steve Shaw
26-Jan-21 - 01:27 PM
Thread Name: BS: A Changed USA Senate!
Subject: RE: BS: A Changed USA Senate!
You really do need to be clear about this. The impeachment process, right up to conviction by Senate trial (in the unlikely event of that happening), is political, not criminal. He can't come out of this process a criminal, however heinous you regard his behaviour. It's unfortunate that we use words such as trial, crime and conviction for the impeachment process, which are misleading and which have clearly misled many people. There is no jury and, if there are going to be witnesses, which, I emphasise, there don't have to be, they won't be witnesses on the same footing as witnesses in a federal court. Only a criminal trial in an ordinary court of law can make him a criminal and put him behind bars. Good luck with that, also, in my opinion, unlikely to happen. However strongly we feel about his misdeeds, we have to take a deep breath and, as democrats who abide by the rule of law, accept that there are no shortcuts, no matter how animated we may feel about him. Even for sedition. You still have to prove it in court. Until then, you can consider him to be the world's biggest scumbag, but not, in law, a criminal.