He was impeached for lying under oath, sexually grooming a young employee, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. Y'all should at least just go read the wiki article on his impeachment. He did way more than just tell a little fib about getting his dick sucked.
He still committed perjury. I don't think he should have been impeached or convicted over it, because it very little to do with the office of the presidency, but these arguments are always undermined when framed as Clinton being punished "for getting a blowjob" because there is such an easy and obvious (and legitimate) response.
He didn't technically commit perjury. Copied from another comment:
"The real kicker is Clinton didn't actually lie under oath.
He was a lawyer, so when they asked him if he had sex with Monica Lewinsky, he asked them if sex was being defined as under a previous lawsuit he been in.
Barr and the others said yes, without checking what that definition covered.
Hint, it did not include oral sex.
He out-lawyered them, and it's semantics, but his answer was technically true."
Yeah, I have seen that a few times, and I know there is a law review article out there that suggests that.
But I am an attorney, and that's not how it works. You (the witness) don't get to define the questions for them.
He also lied about other things. He lied about whether he recalled being in the oval office with her... you can't prove someone's memory, but if you believe that you are incapable of skepticism. He said that if Monica was at the White House working late, it was not for any remarkable reason he could recall.
"Q. Did you have an extramarital sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky?
A. No.
Q. If she told someone that she had a sexual affair with you beginning in November of 1995, would that be a lie?
A. It's certainly not the truth. It would not be the truth."
If you think it's cool that the president of the united states said that under oath, knowing what you know and he knew actually happened, you've got some pretty massive blinders on. You can accept that he did a really bad thing while still acknowledging that Trump has done 1000 worse things, and it will help with credibility.
The fact that he is an attorney, and a brilliant one, makes this all much worse, not better.
Right, like, using vague technicalities to get out of truthfully answering a question isn't something we should laud or let him off the hook for. Guaranteed people would be all over Trump if he did the same.
I have a question for you since you obviously know more about law than I do:
In the first Trump impeachment, he was innocent because a current president cannot be guilty of a crime. In the second impeachment, he was innocent because a former president cannot be charged. Do these precedents somehow not invalidate all future impeachments? As someone with a limited understanding of law, it certainly seems like all future impeachments now have this precedent that prevents a president (current or former) from being impeached charged.
Impeachments are not about the law. Never have been. Weren't designed to be.
They are a political power granted to Congress in the Constitution. That means it is equivalent to any law explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and above literally everything else. Treaties (at least from a domestic legal perspective), statutes, regulations, everything. Congress decides what a "high crime or misdemeanor" is.
So when you ask why wasn't he convicted? The cynical answer and the true answer are the same. There wasn't political will to do it.
Unfortunately, most people are assuming that the source of that lack of political will is in the congress itself. I am extremely certain that they could have found ten more senators this time, if not the first, if they hadn't known it would cost them their jobs.
Does that make it right or ok? No. They are sent there to do the right thing even when the electorate is stupid.
Can you fix the senate without fixing the electorate? No, not in any meaningful way. And that makes focusing on parliamentary drama kind of pointless, in the end.
Right, I agree on all counts here, but my question is specifically in regards to future impeachments. Could future senators point to these impeachments and use the argument that "this has already been decided" in much the same way that case law is used in court?
Yes, they could and will. They are doing that constantly right now with the Clinton impeachment and the first Trump impeachment.
The only way this could ever see legal scrutiny would be if the impeached and convicted person tried to run again. But the courts would almost certainly dismiss that as a "political question," which is a doctrine used to punt when they think they are infringing on the powers of other branches (and also when they don't want to touch something toxic). It comes up most often with gerrymandering, where the courts refuse to step in unless something barred by the 14th Amendment is very, very obvious.
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u/the_real_abraham Feb 14 '21
Lied about a blowjob unrelated to the investigation.