He did not say that you cannot claim constitutional protection for criminal speech. The famous example is that you cannot falsely shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.īut that is not what Raskin said. A person cannot commit perjury by lying under oath, or impersonate a federal police officer, or lie on a tax return. Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. So anything protected by the First Amendment cannot be any sort of crime because it supersedes criminal laws, and therefore any senator sworn to follow the Constitution in this trial cannot consider anything protected by a constitutional right to be criminal grounds for impeachment and conviction. The First Amendment is part of the Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of the Land. And each senator takes an oath at an impeachment trial that the senator “will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.” The Constitution says that a president can be impeached only for high crimes and misdemeanors. That goes to the heart of what impeachment is about. Actually, the Constitution is a 100 percent defense against impeachment. I have already opined on why trying the impeachment of a former president is unconstitutional and what advice I would give Trump.īut Raskin took this sham to a new low of unconstitutionality when he argued that there is no First Amendment defense against impeachment. This is an outrage that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago. Knowing the main points the Trump team’s arguments are about to make to the Senate, lead manager Raskin included in his remarks that even if Trump’s words on January 6 were protected by the First Amendment, he can still be impeached and convicted for them. The Democrat House impeachment managers concluded their arguments regarding the former president on Thursday. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is dead wrong when he says that former President Donald Trump can be impeached for political speech that is protected by the First Amendment, and it speaks volumes about this unconstitutional sham of a Senate impeachment trial. This article appeared on on February 11, 2021. Ken Blackwell is Senior Fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at Family Research Council.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |