Jack Ford Examines the Presidential Impeachment Process

Steve Adubato sits down with Jack Ford, Host, MetroFocus, Award-winning Journalist, and Visiting Professor at Yale College, to discuss the Constitution crisis, the impeachment process, and President Trump's impeachment.  

3/21/2020 #202

Excerpt:

"We are now joined by Jack Ford host Metro Focus award-winning journalist and Visiting professor at Yale good to see Jack. Steve always a pleasure you know we're taping this program as we enter the spring of 2020 the impeachment process that played itself out everyone watched breathlessly or not the thing with you that I’m Fascinated by because of your work as a trial lawyer a professor of law legal analyst for many many years is that you Understand this in a way most don't here's the question the long lasting impact big picture of what happened how it played Out in the house and in the senate as relates to president trump what does it mean moving forward for the presidency if and for our nation? If you look at the presidency I think what what you see happening now and it's a continuum you start really with bill Clinton and then you get to Donald trump and, and what I think you've seen now is the idea of impeachment which when it was created by the framers and placed in the constitution was deemed to be the most dramatic step that we would take as a democracy to reverse an election and as a consequence the framers talked about you had to have one of the most significant abuses of power in order to trigger that I think what we see now and That continuum between president Clinton and president trump is impeachment is now become just another arrow in the political quiver. An arrow? Yeah in the political yeah. Quiver meaning we're the other party. Right. We don't like you this--Right. Is the way you're characterizing this--Right. It's it's a card we can play. We're the other party and we have the majority in congress because remember the standard is everybody's arguing about what's the standard of impeachment the the framers intentionally left that open and and vague because they thought it's going to depend upon the circumstances Gerald ford former president Gerald ford when he was the speaker of the house during the the run-up to president Nixon’s possible Impeachment was asked specifically well what is the standard for an impeachment Offense and his answer was quite candidly it is whatever that congress--(laughter) At that moment says it is and that's what the framers had in mind so that's why I say now it is just another political arrow in the political quiver because if one party's in control and they don't like policies and they can generate enough enough support they can say all right this is it we're coming after you in an impeachment process and that's not what the framers had in mind. So the larger question that you're not going to see no disrespect to the other Networks out there but there's ..."