Except no other presidents had a clear evidence trail linking their campaign to direct support from the foreign power they were supposedly helping. So no, I don’t think this would make impeachment commonplace, and I do think that impeachment is already hyper partisan because otherwise we would have seen Trump impeached by now. The 2/3 bar in the Senate makes this a futile exercise, though, except in extreme cases, I just think that without the truly insane level of partisan split currently in force, Trump would have risen to that level. Especially after the past week, he might get there anyway (though more likely people will find something else to distract and everyone will get to creep back to his side - it’s already happening).
The evidence at this point, just based on what is public, is very strong. Far stronger than any recent President would have had. This has been linked before, but for example:
Not that he’s an actual lawyer, but that his rules are that you must prove your points beyond a reasonable doubt or his “client” is innocent, and thus we must agree that he’s innocent.
Look at how he argues. He’s just trying to throw reasonable doubts into various discussions. Except when he’s arguing that white culture is being destroyed by the dark foreigners in Europe, then he’s super 100% sure.
You are of course free to dispute that to your heart’s content, but it is like pissing in the wind, because no court has so ruled.
It is a matter of triviality to distinguish the opinions of a foreign person from opposition research provided by a foreign person, in at least exemplar form, so as to save the law from your constitutional hysteria. I suppose you could invent some fringe example that would be hard to distinguish, but that’s what courts are for, to decide the fringe issues. In effect, you’re saying that if a foreign person can’t give the campaign a Lamborghini, then free speech is dead. I’ll leave it to you to argue that a Lamborghini is a thing of value but opposition research is not.
Can you distinguish, or provide some case law that distinguishes, a campaign seeking oppo research from a foreign national (BAD, according to you), from a situation where a campaign seeks political advice or consulting from a foreign national (LEGAL and COMMONPLACE).
And even then it wouldn’t matter. Trump could live stream handing over the position of all our boomers and the nuclear codes the House GOP would still find a reason it was okay.
There is absolutely zero chance of the Senate convicting Trump for illegal collusion with Russia. They don’t care. They might impeach him if he nominated Merrick Garland to the SC, or if he decided to defend the ACA in court, or if he decided to raise taxes for the wealthy, or other things like that, because those are the only ‘crimes’ about which they care.
This would certainly be the key issue, but I don’t think it would be unreasonable given the importance of ensuring that people are impeached for things consistently in future administrations.
To be clear, I think both of your assessments would be unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment. A clue is you are relying on a 200-year old statute that has not been used in modern history.
These articles identify a whole bunch of lawyers - some of them actual Constitutional lawyers - who think opposition research is a thing of value and that it is a crime for a a foreign person to provide opposition research to a campaign. Some also say it isn’t, which is of par for the course. None of them cite case law saying that opposition research is not a thing of value.
