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IS IMPEACHMENT THE ANSWER?
PART 1 of 2

 

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.
December 15, 2014

NewsWithViews.com

Mr. J.B. Williams recently wrote a commentary for NewsWithViews entitled “House Republicans Place Obama on Official Notice”, in which he focused on the continuing constitutional crisis caused by the residency of Mr. Barack Obama in the White House. (Observe: I did not say “the Presidency” of Mr. Obama, which is a different matter altogether.) Normally, I do not respond to columns by fellow writers for NewsWithViews. But in this instance Mr. Williams has rashly taken it upon himself to include me (and my long-time friend, Devvy Kidd) among those who he asserts—with his usual self-assured verbal vehemence—must be “held accountable for this constitutional crisis”:

Although I cannot speak for Devvy Kidd, I personally deplore such an outburst as counterproductive, in that Mr. Williams ought not to alienate those among his natural allies who may not always see precisely eye-to-eye with him.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Williams’ diatribe takes no notice of how, for nearly a decade now in my commentaries for NewsWithViews and in other writings and personal appearances, I have recommended again and again that Americans should finally pay heed to what the Constitution itself—not I, nor Mr. Williams, nor some other “internet expert”—declares to be “necessary to the security of a free State”. So if I am to be “held accountable” for anything, perhaps I should be upbraided for having overestimated the intelligence or patriotism of the people on whom my admonitions have had no measurable effect.

Mr. Williams’ denunciation of me also rather cavalierly asserts facts not in evidence. For example, precisely what “comes as news to the U.S. Supreme Court and every member of Congress, not to mention millions of Americans”—that Mr. Obama “isn’t really the President”; or that, if he is not “really the President”, he “cannot be impeached” but must be dealt with in some other manner? And how in either case does Mr. Williams intuit what the Supreme Court, Congress, and “millions of Americans” supposedly know (or perhaps do not know) with regard to these questions? Then, on what grounds does Mr. William claim that “Impeachment” actually is the exclusive (or even any) remedy for the very specific crime of impersonating the President of the United States, as to which misbehavior (in general terms) a statute of the United States—18 U.S.C. § 912—exists, along with several other laws relevant to that sort of misconduct—such as 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001, 1003, 1017, and 1028? (Recall, too, that I have never advocated, in Mr. Williams’ words, “arrest and hanging for treason” as a remedy in this case, because by itself impersonation of the President does not amount constitutionally to “Treason”.) In all of his voluminous writings on this issue, Mr. Williams has never explained how an individual who does not actually hold a public office, because he is ineligible for it in the first instance and at every instant thereafter, can be removed from that office through the process of “Impeachment”—any more than Mr. Williams ever could have explained how water which was never poured into a pitcher could possibly be poured out of it. Finally, is it (as Mr. Williams charges) “an overt attempt to confuse and paralyze ‘the people’ allowing Obama to continue his assault on the Constitution” for me to insist that the constitutionally logical course of action be followed to remedy this situation, rather than some half-baked, self-contradictory approach which will inevitably mislead this country into a veritable rat’s nest of further, perhaps intractable if not insoluble, legal and political problems? Is not this country in a constitutional crisis today precisely because too many people—including not a few who style themselves “constitutionalists” and “patriots”—have been playing too fast and loose with the Constitution for too long already?

Mr. Williams further notes that: “Of course, neither Dr. Vieira nor Kidd have followed their own expert advice and filed a criminal complaint against Obama in order to prove their legal theory.” Well, neither has Mr. Williams “filed a criminal complaint against Obama in order to prove [any] legal theory”. So it seems that we are met here with the pot calling the kettles black. Of more consequence, I myself have not “filed a criminal complaint” for three rather obvious reasons: (i) I am neither a prosecutor nor any other type of “law-enforcement officer”. But, even as he attacks me, Mr. Williams refrains from calumniating a certain Sheriff who for a long time has been conducting, with great public fanfare, an investigation ostensibly aimed at the possibility of bringing criminal charges in this affair—yet who has to date, as far as I know, neither filed any such charges himself nor referred his findings (whatever they may be) to any prosecutor or grand jury. (ii) In the absence of both full disclosure of the actual relevant documents (which Mr. Obama has to date secreted from public view), and the credible and corroborated testimony of some “whistleblowers”, I cannot say with moral, let alone legal, certainty that Mr. Obama is or is not an imposter. I may entertain my own grave suspicions on that score; but unverified speculations alone are insufficient for the purpose of “fil[ing] a criminal complaint” in good faith. True it is that certain experts have voiced their opinions that various documents relevant to Mr. Obama’s supposed eligibility for the office of President are forged, fraudulent, or in some other way falsified. But, not being fully versed in the area of forensic document analysis myself, I should be loathe to accept such claims without some independent verification—especially when not one of these experts or their associates, to my knowledge, has directly or indirectly “filed a[ny] criminal complaint[s]”. And (iii) what point would there be for anyone to “file a criminal complaint” concerning Mr. Obama with some official (real or faux) in the present Department of Justice? If that were a realistic option, one or more real officials in that Department would or should already have taken such action.

What Mr. Williams stubbornly refuses to recognize is that, even if there were some plausible ground to assert that “Impeachment” is a possible remedy in this case, “Impeachment” never was, and would not now be, the preferred remedy. Consider—

(1) As I have explained in other commentaries, when Congress convened to count the electoral votes in the Presidential elections of 2008 and 2012, simply one Representative and one Senator could have asserted a statutory right (and duty, for that matter) to challenge each and every electoral vote supposedly cast for Mr. Obama, and to require Congress to inquire into Mr. Obama’s eligibility—for if Mr. Obama had not been eligible for election to the office of President, no electoral vote cast for him could have been valid. Such an inquiry would have solved the problem then and there and once and for all, without any concern for “Impeachment”. Unfortunately, not a single Member of Congress raised such an objection on either occasion.

(2) That, of course, was then; and this is now—and Americans’ dissatisfaction with Mr. Obama has deepened to the point at which, one would hope, even the most politically cowardly Members of Congress can no longer afford to sweep the scandal under the rug. For that reason, after the new Congress convenes in 2015, either the House or the Senate (or both) might conduct investigations into (say) “illegality and corruption in the Executive Branch” which would aim at amassing such evidence as might be available to expose Mr. Obama’s alleged ineligibility for the office of President as well as other misbehavior on the part of himself, his appointees, and the gaggle of partisans and hangers-on in both public office and private station who have assisted them. With all of that evidence on record, Mr. Obama and his adherents would find themselves in an impossible position. On the one hand, the Republicans and sensible Democrats in Congress might combine in sufficient numbers to enact veto-proof legislation providing for some species of “special prosecutor” or “independent counsel” to take that evidence to grand juries and then to trials. On the other hand, if enough Democrats and turncoat Republicans refused to coöperate, so that such legislation could not be enacted before the Presidential elections of 2016, their intransigeance would simply guarantee that a proper Republican would then be elected President, along with a properly and solidly Republican Congress. Thereafter, in 2017 a new Republican Attorney General could prosecute the cases à outrance. If between 2015 and 2017 Mr. Obama and his cronies tried to brazen it out by continuing in their presumably faux offices, they would simply be adding new counts to their indictments. If they chose instead to “resign” the offices they never rightly held, they would not thereby evade punishment, because the statutes of limitations on many of the crimes with which they would be charged would not run out between 2015 and 2017 (or even for many years thereafter). And during the remainder of his faux term, having been unmasked as a merely faux President Mr. Obama could not grant anyone a reprieve or pardon for such offences which would stand up to later scrutiny. In any event, no recourse to “Impeachment” would be necessary. So, contrary to Mr. Williams’ claim, Mr. Obama is not “forcing Congressional Republicans to either Impeach him or stand down as he finishes off the destruction of the U.S. Republic”. Republicans—and patriotic Democrats, too—do have options far less problematic, and far more punishing to Mr. Obama and his minions in their outcomes, than “Impeachment”. Whether they will exercise these options remains the question.

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The decisive practical reason for avoiding “Impeachment” is that invocation of “Impeachment” concedes that, in some way or other, Mr. Obama is actually ensconced in the office of President to the degree sufficient to be subject to “Impeachment”. Perhaps not as a truly de jure President, but at least as a de facto one. This concession would support the inference that, because Mr. Obama has postured as some sort of “acting” (albeit faux) President, the ostensibly “official actions” he has taken under color of that masquerade will retain legal validity even after his usurpation is set aside through “Impeachment”. So, although he himself might be ignominiously booted out of the White House, the supposed statutes he has signed, the putative executive orders he has promulgated, the judicial and other appointments he has foisted on the Senate, and so on would nonetheless continue in effect. He personally would be degraded and disgraced; but his “political legacy”—the harm his misbegotten actions have inflicted and will continue to inflict on this country—would fester on. To correct this mess, all of these usurpations would then have to be undone—not, however, on the uncompromising constitutional basis that every one of them was void ab initio, but instead on an item-by-item political determination as to which should be thrown out and which retained. That would enable Mr. Obama’s partisans in Congress, the courts, the big media, and the influential lobbies to fight endless rear-guard battles to salvage as much of the destructive handiwork of his faux Administration as they could. And, worst of all, the perverse principle would be established that the Constitution must yield to any successful usurpation of that ilk which might arise hereafter. For part two click below.

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� 2014 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved

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