Rob Natelson Weighs in on Latest Trump Impeachment Testimony
More testimony was heard in Washington, D.C. last week as the Impeachment process continued in the House Intelligence Committee.
Constitutional scholar and former UM law Professor Rob Natelson with the Independence Institute in Denver provided his insights of the proceedings as they pertain to the U.S. Constitution.
“What I see so far are mostly political disagreements, great dissatisfaction in the bureaucracy, in particular, the State Department, the very bureaucracy that President Trump ran against and pledged to reform,” Natelson began. “I don’t see impeachable offenses at this point.”
Natelson said the President of the United States is constitutionally mandated to direct U.S. foreign policy.
“The President may or may not have been conducting correctly,” he said. “But, that’s not a question for impeachment. That’s what he’s elected to do. It damages the position of the President in the constitutional system and it also damages the constitutional balance to try to prosecute a President because one house of the legislature isn’t controlled by his party anymore.”
Drawing on his research into the U.S. Constitution, Natelson delves deeper into the matters being discussed at the hearings in Washington, D.C.
“The purpose of the presidency and the reason for making it a presidency as opposed to say, a prime ministership, is to establish a strong, independent office that’s responsible to the American people and not to the Congress,” he said. “When the Congress tries to remove a President because of policy disagreements, even profound policy disagreements, it really undercuts the presidency and what the constitutional balance is all about.”
Natelson also mused about the real purpose of the hearings, namely not just to impeach the President, but to enable the opposing party in the upcoming 2020 Presidential election.
“You don’t ask the taxpayers to do your opposition research,” he said. “What’s ironic here is that what President Trump is charged with, that is trying to get the Ukraine to do his opposition research for him against Joe Biden, which may or may not be true, but what we see now in these impeachment proceedings is the use of taxpayer dollars and federal dollars to do the opposition research against President Trump,” he said.
Natelson is the Constitutional Fellow at the Independence Institute in Denver and is the author of ‘The Original Constitution; What it Actually Said and Meant’, as well as providing commentary to dozens of TV and radio stations across the country, and writing opinion pieces for The Epoch Times.