Impeachment of Trump

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

TD's post really emphasizes how much of a hole Trump has dug himself. Let's assume for a minute that Trump has absolutely no nefarious connections with Russians, that the whole pee tape is fake, and really this is all smoke without fire. Here's what would have happened:

- Trump occasionally does business with Russia, but nothing nefarious, or different than any other business magnate does.
- Trump sees on the news some day that the DNC's been hacked, loves it, and goes on to publicly cheer the attack. Nothing too weird there.
- Trump eventually finds out the Russians were behind the attack. Why should he care? What they did helped him, he like it at the time, and Putin seems like a guy who's generally got his back.
- Comey goes after Clinton and probably gives Trump a last-minute boost. Trump loves this too.
- Trump thinks about hiring Flynn. Obama tells him not to, so of course he's going to do it.
- Eventually Trump hears that there are accusations that Russia helped deliver the election to Trump so they could use him as a puppet. This infuriates him, since he thinks he did it all by himself, and he never even talked to a Russian contact at any point throughout the campaign. Clearly a witch hunt to destroy his presidency!
- Trump fires Flynn, seeing that he's become a liability in the PR sphere, but still thinks he's a good guy and will re-hire him once all these accusations get "exposed" and it all blows over.
- Trump hears Comey might be looking into these accusations. What a shmuck! He thought Comey was on his side! A total betrayal! He should know there's nothing to these Russia claims!
- Trump fires Comey, since he's clearly lost his senses, and figures someone else will be able to do the job with fewer distractions.

And even that is illegal.

Trump doesn't seem to realize that even if there is no there there, disrupting an investigation is still itself a crime. At this point, it doesn't even matter if Trump had any connection to the Russians, as long as there's evidence he committed obstruction of justice, just as it never really mattered if Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in beforehand.

It would be a crime for the traditional citizen, but Impeachment is not a matter of whether the law is broken, but whether the senate feels, by a 2/3 majority, whether the president's actions fall under the circumstances for Impeachment called for in the Constitution, which are Treason (not applicable here), Bribery (not applicable here), and "other high crimes or misdemeanors", which the senate can define however they like. Unless there's a direct connection between Trump and Russia, you aren't getting a conviction in the Senate due to the way to the 2/3 majority requirement being bottled up by republican loyalists.

And before you ask, no, the president cannot be removed from office via the courts. Aside from cases where the president is convicted by the senate and refuses to step down, or refuses to step down at the end of their term, the judicial branch has no authority to remove the president from office.

If the final result of Muller's investigation is "Trump is clearly guilty of obstruction" but the GOP Senate  refuses to impeach him, the end result will be a 2/3 Dem majority house (and eventually Senate) with a Dem President in 2021. And then Trump will spend his remaining years in jail for obstruction of justice.

Or the US implodes. Take your pick.