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The Trump brief for the trial that begins today is mostly shoddy work, but it raises one argument worth attention, summarized below in bold
The brief's text: "The Constitution only grants the Senate the additional power to remove a person's right to run for office as *part* of the process of removal from office. When a person ceases to hold office, he immediately becomes a private citizen, impervious to removal ...."
Unlike the rest of the Trump brief, this argument is not idiotic. I'll be thinking about it during the debate today.
In the main, however, the Trump brief is a strikingly stupid and sloppy piece of work, written in a tone of belligerent name-calling.
I notice eg that on page 15 the brief quotes 8 words from Tocqueville. I checked the original. Of 8 words, 2 were wrong. How do you do that?
I notice eg that on page 15 the brief quotes 8 words from Tocqueville. I checked the original. Of 8 words, 2 were wrong. How do you do that?
Searchable, copy-and-paste Tocqueville text is right here. You just need to highlight the quote you want and move it to your brief, 100% error-free. Seriously, how can any lawyer mess it up? http://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm
The problem originated I suppose because Tocqueville said the exact opposite of what the Trump legal team wanted him to say ...
Tocqueville:
The main object of the political jurisdiction which obtains in the United States is, therefore, to deprive the ill-disposed citizen of an authority which he has used amiss, *** and to prevent him from ever acquiring it again. ***
The main object of the political jurisdiction which obtains in the United States is, therefore, to deprive the ill-disposed citizen of an authority which he has used amiss, *** and to prevent him from ever acquiring it again. ***
Team Trump wanted to obliterate the phrase I highlighted ... and in obliterating the inconvenient words, mangled the rest of the quote too.
Interestingly, Tocqueville's analysis of impeachment worried (in the sentence immediately previous to that misquoted by lawyers) that impeachment would be inadequate remedy against a truly sinister president ...
Tocqueville worried impeachment was too weak because it could ONLY debar from office, not criminally punish
"[Impeachment] can never reach the most dangerous offenders, since men who aim at the entire subversion of the laws are not likely to murmur at a political interdict."
"[Impeachment] can never reach the most dangerous offenders, since men who aim at the entire subversion of the laws are not likely to murmur at a political interdict."
Anyway pretty obvious Trump lawyers didn't read the Tocqueville passage, just sent an associate or intern trawling through law review articles in search of 3d-hand quotes they could use.
