Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump

    “If Hillary were the president, the Republicans would clamor for her impeachment, just as the Dems do with Trump right now,” says Alan Dershowitz. He writes that a “corrupt nature” is not grounds for impeachment, and that if it is then it would mean impeachment for every politician and judge, simply for them having exercised their power. That power, by the way, is the kind that the US constitution guarantees, and it was not the reason that President Clinton was impeached, nor the reason that Nixon barely dodged impeachment. Where, he argues, do we have grounds for impeaching President Trump?

   According to Dershowitz, the president commits no crime by using his executive power. If he doesn’t use his powers to dodge or direct an internal investigation (as Nixon did) then he’s guilty of nothing. The next problem rests on whether or not someone is obliged to reveal information, and the example is General Mike Flynn lying about his contacts with Russian diplomats. He did lie, but was he obliged to reveal that information in the first place? All he did was say “hey, Sergey, can you delay the vote on the next UN resolution?” It may have made things easier for Trump, not having an anti-Israel resolution on his hands, making things a little more favorable before an election. However, it doesn’t amount to meddling.

   Another problem with today’s “Dump Trump” cult (yes, I call it a cult) is the danger of targeting Trump’s lawyer. We know the base fact, that an attorney can’t be forced to testify against his client, nor can he be expected to reveal anything the client says, it’s all covered by attorney-client privilege. However, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, has been convicted of a crime, so he hasn’t got much to lose. He can’t be a lawyer anymore, he doesn’t have any clients to lose, so he’s more likely to cut a deal with the Feds. It is this scenario that troubles Dershowitz, particularly in terms of general confidence in lawyers. Remember the character Tobias Beecher in the TV drama OZ? He was a lawyer who went to prison for manslaughter, and from the get-go was sitting duck in prison. A man like that would jump at the chance to sing to the Feds for a reduced sentence. If Michael Cohen testifies against Trump, would it make Americans less comfortable about talking to their lawyer? According to the author, the answer may be yes.

    So, what does Americas top lawyer have to say about the enticed attorney, tempted to testify by offers of immunity? He says that the 5^th and 6^th Amendments need to be followed more closely. Should the FBI bug a lawyers office, or a confession booth, or seize medical records, then the evidence would be inadmissible. However, evidence that is inadmissible at trial can still be shown to the judge, and it can prejudice the judge in his judgement. The accused can sue for damages, but what’s the use? Once the citizens see that the authorities can breach attorney privilege or medical privilege, then they’ll be less likely to trust in these professions. If the FBI raids Michael Cohen’s files, it sets a terrible precedent.

   It seems that the quest for Trump’s impeachment shows how lazy the FBI have become. If they want to find evidence against the president, they can find it on other sources, like financial records. They can find evidence of illegal payments, unpaid taxes, financial fraud, payoffs to officials. I know of a business that suspected their partner was embezzling, and they hired a forensic accountant who did an amazing audit; he found evidence of fraud, even though the partner had locked everyone out of his office and records. Finding evidence of financial misconduct is all about math, and it means hard work. Dershowitz argues throughout the book that none of the evidence against Trump is legitimate; talking to Putin wasn’t illegal, paying off Stormy Daniels wasn’t illegal either, and there’s no law requiring the President to put his money in a blind trust.

   Being an asshole, or being overly chummy with a foreign head-of-state, or hiring your greedy son-in-law, are not grounds for impeachment. If the FBI agents want evidence against Trump, let them roll up their sleeves and investigate. Hounding the accused’s former attorneys will not be a legitimate way to gather evidence.

The Bodies in Person: An Account of Civilian Casualties in American Wars

   In all of the foreign conflicts that the USA has gotten into, civilian deaths are usually high. Nick McDonell begins his story by staying in a hotel in Erbil where the other foreign press are staying. Enjoying a third-rate luxury hotel with the name – I kid you not – The Classy Hotel, is not a way to understand hat’s really going on. The US press are all lounging together, and the local reporters, who know the inside stories, aren’t getting published in US papers.

   The author, while posted to Iraq, goes to meet an army colonel, who turns out to be not in the army but in civil defense. The colonel’s job is to locate the dead, but he’s faced with two problems; first, the regular army get in the way, and second, the army are not much good at keeping the people alive anyway. Few people care about civilian dead, until a wealthy influential man is killed and a lot of people want him recovered.

    Throughout the book, Iraqi troops cower in wrecked vehicles, in ragged uniforms, low on everything, while officers are treated like princes (typical of third-world armies.) If nobody cares about the troops, then why would the troops care about civilian deaths? In a country where record-keeping is not that great, there isn’t much accurate data on civilian deaths and the families are lucky to get compensation. The author uses as an example an Iraqi civilian guard at a US base, who was paralyzed in a shooting, and got $7,000. As for the services for disabled people in Iraq, there basically aren’t any.

    The problem with this book is that the title says “American Wars,” but the book focuses mainly on Iraq. What about the other wars where civilians got killed? There were a sizeable number of civilians killed in Panama, Somalia, Desert Storm, and the bombing of Belgrade where the Chinese embassy was hit. Did the families of the dead receive any compensation? The answer is most likely no.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

   I’d never heard of Grace Humiston (later Grace Quackenbos) until this book came out. She was one of the few women lawyers in the USA, and took on a lot of cases for indigents, many of them immigrants. One of the more sensational cases was an Italian woman in New Jersey, who shot and killed her Italian boss for extorting sexual favors. The woman got a few years in jail, but it spared her the death penalty that the prosecutor wanted. Then there was an immigrant woman, committed to a mental hospital by dishonest (and racist) doctors, intent on deporting her under the law that barred the insane from entry. She was most likely bipolar and not mentally ill but the psychologists in those days weren’t exactly enlightened. The woman was deported, but it brought the problem to the public’s attention.

   Humiston also discovered a kind of slavery (not mentioned in the history books) in the south where Italians were used as forced labor. They were lured to the USA by employment agencies, then handed an exorbitant bill for their passage. They’d be kept in bondage in the swamps, and forced to work off their huge debt by armed guards. She travelled to Italy to find out more, which was dangerous at the time. Joseph Petrosino, a police lieutenant, had recently been murdered in Sicily while researching the Black Hand gang, and she, an American who spoke no Italian, put herself at extreme risk.

    Her final (and most famous case) was where a girl from a wealthy family vanished with no trace, and the last man to see her was the owner of a motorcycle business. The store was searched top-to-bottom, and the coal chutes dug empty, before Humiston uncovered the hiding place; a pit in the floor concealed by a workbench (which the top detectives had overlooked.)

    This book reminded me a lot of The Alienist, with the dark alleys, gaslit lanes, and creepy characters. The author has dug up a wealth of information that I’d never known, and I give him top credit for bringing all this to light. However, I’m not sure if today’s readers will be especially interested in Grace Humiston’s story. She’s been forgotten for years.