Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano did not hold back in an op-ed thoroughly blasting Senate Republicans for acquitting President Donald Trump despite him being “guilty as charged.”
Senate Republicans completed their rigged impeachment trial on Wednesday, acquitting Trump of abusing his power and obstructing Congress. Only Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) crossed the aisle to join Democrats in voting to convict on the charge of abuse of power.
The GOP ignored all the new evidence that arose during the trial, including documents from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas alleging that Trump did not care about investigating corruption in Ukraine. He only cared about smearing former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 Election.
Furthermore, Republicans refused to call any witnesses to testify because they feared those witnesses would implicate Trump and force them to convict.
In the end, Republicans let Trump off the hook, but Napolitano is not letting them get away with it because he penned an op-ed ripping them a new one for subverting the Constitution and making the executive branch all-powerful.
“In its wake is a Congress ceding power to the presidency, almost as if the states had ratified a constitutional amendment redefining the impeachment language to permit a president to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors so long as he believes that they are in the national interest and so long as his party has an iron-clad grip on the Senate,” Napolitano wrote.
“The evidence that Trump did this is overwhelming and beyond a reasonable doubt, and no one with firsthand knowledge denied it,” he continued. “Numerous government officials recounted that the presidential leverage of $391 million in U.S. assistance for a personal political favor did occur and the government’s own watchdog concluded that it was indisputably unlawful.”
“This morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest argument – which effectively resuscitates from history’s graveyard President Richard Nixon’s logic that ‘when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal’ because the president is above the law – must have resonated with Senate Republican leaders,” the former judge observed.
He then chastised Trump for blocking witness testimony despite claiming that those witnesses would prove his innocence.
“If Trump really believes he did not commit any crimes and any impeachable offenses, why would he orchestrate blocking evidence?” Napolitano wrote. “And who – having taken an oath to do ‘impartial justice’ – would close their eyes to the truth? How could such a marathon of speeches possibly be considered a trial?”
“Trump will luxuriate in his victory,” he concluded. “But the personal victory for him is a legal assault on the Constitution. The president has taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Instead, he has trashed it.”
Senate Republicans have done lasting damage to our nation and the Constitution that may not be undone simply by ousting Trump from office in November. Now that Republicans have made their bed, they are going to have to sleep in it once a Democrat takes over the presidency and all of the newfound power Republicans have provided. They can threaten impeachment all they want, but karmic retribution will be the order of the day. Conservatives are giddy about Trump being clothed in immense power right now, but just wait until a Democrat inherits those powers. Then they will regret it.
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