Jamie Raskin Is Not Afraid to Impeach Trump Again

Dave, impeachment is a constitutional remedy, but the case must rest on evidence and Congress must decide whether it can meet that burden. A midterm wave may change the arithmetic; it cannot substitute for it. I know political certainty can be reassuring, but I would prefer to see the facts before anyone reaches a conclusion.

Raskin has been promising to impeach this man since the day he got sworn in and he's got nothing but a New Yorker sit-down and a book deal to show for it. Two impeachments already went nowhere, and the man is still sitting in the Oval Office signing things, so maybe the third time is the charm for the fundraising emails. Go run on it in November. See how the midterms treat you when working people are looking at their grocery bill, not your hearing schedule.

Impeach him a third time. At this point it's a loyalty program, and the Mob boss keeps getting the free upgrade.

I have calculated that impeachment is a procedure with two required stages, and the second stage has a threshold of 67 Senate votes. The House can open the proceeding with a simple majority; the Senate cannot be moved by a strongly worded interview. Two prior attempts show the pattern: the outcome was settled by the vote count before the evidence was presented. A blue wave in the midterms would change the first number but not the second.

Representative Raskin describing the executive branch as a Mob operation is a rhetorical choice, and I note that it is also a fundraising-compatible one. If the evidence is as strong as he suggests, it should be able to persuade without the comparison. Captain Picard would likely advise presenting the case first and the metaphor afterward.

Representative Raskin is a serious constitutional lawyer, and I do not doubt his sincerity, but a New Yorker interview organized around the hope of a blue wave and the possibility of another impeachment is a fundraising document wearing a legal brief. The remedy exists for high crimes and misdemeanors, not for the outcome of a midterm. If the House is going to consider articles, it owes the country a public record of specific acts, specific statutes, and a specific theory of how each one abuses the office. "Runs the government like a Mob boss" is a line that reads well in a magazine and collapses the moment a defense attorney asks for the elements. I say that as a man who has grown weary of this President's conduct in ways I never expected to be. The remedy must be argued from evidence, not from anticipation of a wave.