January 10, 2021
Watching the TV clips of the speeches by Donald Trump Junior, Rudy Giuliani, Attorney and Special Advisor to the President, and then Donald J. Trump, our President, last Thursday, January 7th, inciting to riot the thousands of Trump supporters, who came to Washington D.C. at the invitation of the President (who asked them to interfere with the certification of the November 20 election), and then watching the violence in our Capitol which followed those speeches, gives me ample cause to conclude that Donald J. Trump must be removed from the office of President, as soon as legally possible!
There are several ways by which Trump can be removed from office. The problem is; which way is the fastest, the most permanent, and the least damaging to our social structure. There are several corollary issues to the events of January 7th that need to be addressed, but I’ll save them for later.
It seems to me that the first legal action that should have been taken on Friday the 8th was that federal charges of ‘Sedition’ should have been filed against Donald Junior, Rudy, and the President.
Sedition is broadly defined as -Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a State, and more specifically, and in regard to our government,
Sedition is a serious felony, punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison, and it refers to the act of inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority with the goal of destroying or overthrowing it.
Given those definitions and having seen the videos of: Donald Trump Junior, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald J. Trump’s speeches and Tweets of Thursday, January 7th, all inspiring Trump’s fanatic supporters to riot and invade the chambers of our government, and even Donald J. Trump directing them to, “Walk down to the Capitol and we’re gonna cheer-on our brave senators and congressmen and women. You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong!” And then, the resultant action of Donald’s ardent supporters, storming the barricades of our nation’s Capitol immediately thereafter, I believe all three of those errant ‘citizens’ deserved to be immediately arrested and charged with Sedition, and, without bail, brought to trial as soon as possible. That’s what ‘should’ have happened, but didn’t.
The second ‘way’ and perhaps the next fastest way to get Trump removed from office, is for our Government to invoke Article 25 of our Constitution, which allows for the President to be ruled “incapable of exercising the powers of his office” but I am not a constitutional scholar and don’t’ know the rules of that process or anything about the time it would take to make that ruling. All I do know is that Donald J. Trump would have to be certifiably insane to do what he has done in the last four years. If ‘insanity’ doesn’t qualify as a factor worth removing a President from office, all I can say is, “Gpd Bless America, we’re fucked!” I suspect, that to invoke Article 25, Vice President Pence has to initiate that action and that would make him (he thinks?) look like a usurper of Presidential power? My bottom line is that I hope this Article of our Constitution gets explained to our electorate tomorrow, Monday, January 11th.
A third ‘way’ to get Trump out would be to impeach him again and I suspect the Senate might (finally) realize the urgency to do that. Unfortunately, this seems to me to be longest of the ‘ways’ and I can’t see the possibility of the impeachment being voted on by the Senate before January 20th.
Perhaps the fourth ‘way’ just might be the best and fastest way to get Trump out of office. That way is: He could just resign, Monday, January 11th and then, our first problem, the danger that he will do more great harm to our country, will be over. If that (he resigns) happens, God forbid he makes a deal with Pence to pardon him on the way out.
OK friends, isn’t this the biggest bucket of worms in our government we have ever seen in our lives? I’m now 87 and it qualifies for me! I’m sending this blog out today because tomorrow, January 11th, could be the most important day in the history of the Trump Presidential disaster, if he resigns.
The ‘corollary issues’ I mention earlier are: The threats to politicians and the chaos that happened in airline terminals in the days before the riot. The capital police actions that seemed to welcome the rioters into the rotunda, The absence of adequate police protection of the capitol buildings in the first place, and the delay in getting back-up police support until people were killed and major damage was done to the buildings. The ‘inciting to riot’ happened from early in the day to throughout the afternoon. Trump, and others, continued to sprout their lies and hatred throughout the day. Who was minding the store? Those are a good bunch of questions for our Capitol Police and our Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Watch carefully what happens (and what doesn’t happen) in our government tomorrow!
Lou
Copyright, January 10, 2021, Louis J. Christen