MO BROOKS: 'OBAMA SHOULD HAVE BEEN IMPEACHED' BASED ON DEMOCRATS' 'ABUSE OF POWER' STANDARD
Robert Kraychik
12 Dec 2019
“Barack Obama should have been impeached,” according to the Democrats’ impeachment standard of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress, determined Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) in an interview on Wednesday on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
Brooks highlighted the evolution of Democrats’ accusations of misconduct against Presidential Donald Trump in the context of their public musings of impeachment.
“When I first heard the articles of impeachment that the Democrats are proposing, I thought it was a joke or a trick,” Brooks said. “I mean, gosh, think back: Russian collusion. Well, that’s going to be in the articles of impeachment, isn’t it? Of course not because there’s no evidence to support it. Well, let’s go to Plan B. What was Plan B? He violated the Federal Election Commission rules by accepting a thing of value from the Ukrainian government. Whoops, that’s not in these articles of impeachment. No FEC violations. Okay, let’s go to Plan C. Number 3, bribery. The president committed bribery. These articles of impeachment don’t have bribery as a basis for impeachment.”
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DEmocrats’ proposed articles of impeachment against the president do not include allegations of specific crimes, added Brooks, noting that “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress” are non-legal and nebulous terms of art.
“So basically, you’ve got what’s called ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of Congress,’ neither of which are criminal offenses, and the Constitution is very clear, it’s got a high standard for articles of impeachment,” Brooks explained. “It has to be a high crime, a misdemeanor, treason, or bribery, and the Democrats have admitted that what they’re doing is impeaching a president because they disagree with him personally on a public policy level, and they’re trying to impeach him even though they admit he hasn’t violated a single United State code provision that has criminal penalties. Not one.”
Brooks continued, “That’s what’s startling about all of this, is how [Democrats] are brazenly admitting they were wrong on Russian collusion, admitting they were wrong on Federal Election Commission law violations, admitting they were wrong on the bribery accusation, and now, they have nothing. There’s no legal basis for it. They’re violating their oaths to defend and protect the United States Constitution when the Democrats try to impeach the president when there is no federal criminal statute of any kind alleged to have been violated in these articles of impeachment. That’s quite an admission.”
“There are many Democrats who are going to persist in impeaching the president even though they know that they are violating their oaths of office when they do so,” added Brooks.
Brooks reflected on former President Barack Obama’s use of presidential authority.
“It’s a very dangerous position that the Democrats are taking,” remarked Brooks. “Let’s be very clear. Obstruction of Congress, if that’s the standard, Barack Obama should have been impeached because Barack Obama — on any number of occasions — refused to produce the witnesses and/or documents that the House of Representatives requested on a myriad of different issues. Even to the point where we held in contempt some of his Cabinet members and personnel — executive branch people.”
Brooks went on, “So do we really want to talk about obstruction of Congress? The proper course of action to take, if you disagree with the president’s claim of executive privilege, [is to] go to court and … get a court order. That’s why the judiciary is the third branch of government, to resolve these kinds of disputes. The second one is abuse of power. Well, that’s not a criminal offense, but if it were — if that’s the basis for impeachment — Barack Obama could have been impeached on that basis, too.”
Brooks concluded, “Remember him giving to illegal aliens work permits in direct conflict with federal law that says you cannot give work permits to illegal aliens? From my perspective, that was an abuse of power, but we did not try to impeach President Obama. We took him to court, and we got the appropriate court orders where we could, and in the other cases, it’s still winding its way to the Supreme Court, and the Democrats should have done the exact same thing on these obstruction of justice-slash-Congress arguments or the abuse of power arguments. Get a court order, at least, that says you’re right in your legal contention before you try to impeach a president without even knowing if the Supreme Court would agree with your underlying legal basis.”