Was Trump Actually Impeached? Legal Expert Called By Dems In Hearing Says No

Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman gives his opening statement as he testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

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If nothing else, Democrats’ manipulations are giving everyone a review of the Constitution.

As we observed yesterday, many liberals didn’t seem to understand that impeachment didn’t mean removal.

Most people of course knew that.

But there’s a finer point here, that Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor is claiming and others are also questioning this morning.

Feldman, who ironically was a witness for the Democrats during the impeachment hearings and who argued for Trump’s impeachment, is saying he hasn’t actually been impeached yet.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing this game of considering whether she will sit on the Articles of Impeachment and not pass them to the Senate, until they get an agreement to a “fair trail,” claiming senators have indicated bias and might not let them have the witnesses they want.

That takes some nerve given the manifestly unfair process they’ve employed in the House.

But that sets up a situation that’s never been seen before and Feldman is saying it means that the House hasn’t actually impeached yet.

From Daily Wire:

“Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial,” Feldman wrote. “Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.”

Feldman continued, “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”

Feldman noted that if Democrats do not send the articles of impeachment to the Senate that it would not only deviate from constitutional protocol but it would also “deny the president the chance to defend himself in the Senate that the Constitution provides.”

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The Constitution gives the House the sole power of impeachment and gives the Senate the sole power over the trial. Current Senate rules provide that the House is to notify the Senate that managers have been appointed to present the articles to the Senate and the Senate shall immediately respond they are ready to receive them.

So while Pelosi may be playing this game to deny President Donald Trump an acquittal and/or to play for more time for more evidence or a change in the Senate, her own expert is undercutting her claim that Trump was impeached at all and is pointing out that she and Democrats are doing harm to the process and denying Trump a fair trial.

Trump called out the process as being manifestly unfair during his rally in Michigan and he blasted it again on Twitter.

Trump hammered Democrats on Twitter late on Thursday, writing, “Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up! The Do Nothings are so bad for our Country!”

Trump later added, “So after the Democrats gave me no Due Process in the House, no lawyers, no witnesses, no nothing, they now want to tell the Senate how to run their trial. Actually, they have zero proof of anything, they will never even show up. They want out. I want an immediate trial!”

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This obvious manipulation and delay only adds even greater credence to the argument it’s all political and that can’t play well for Pelosi with the American public.

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