Donald Trump's Costanza Defense

[EasyAce]

The president’s lawyers argue that abuse of power is not impeachable unless it breaks the law.
By Jacob Sullum
https://reason.com/2020/01/22/donald-trumps-costanza-defense/

"Was that wrong?" George Costanza
asks in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld after his boss confronts him with a report that "you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office." George says he has to "plead ignorance," because no one "said anything to me at all when I first started here" suggesting "that sort of thing was frowned upon."

Donald Trump's legal team is trying out a version of the Costanza defense, arguing that the articles of impeachment against him are constitutionally deficient because they do not allege any violations of the law. That claim is so dubious that even Trump's lawyers don't believe it.

The president is accused of abusing his power for personal gain by pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of a political rival. The scheme allegedly included temporarily blocking $391 million in congressionally approved military aid.

The Government Accountability Office recently concluded that Trump's hold on that money violated the Impoundment Control Act. But the articles of impeachment do not mention that law or any other statute that Trump is accused of violating.

Is that a fatal flaw, as Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone insist? Not according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, the sole Republican witness at the House Judiciary Committee's December 4 impeachment hearing.

Turley, who harshly criticized the impeachment process as rushed and incomplete, warned that abuse-of-power allegations can be dangerously amorphous when detached from the elements required to prove a crime. He nevertheless conceded that "the use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one's political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense" . . .

. . . Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's legal team, now takes what he concedes is the minority position, arguing that an impeachable offense has to be a crime. But he was singing a different tune during Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

"It certainly doesn't have to be a crime," Dershowitz

said on CNN. "If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president, and who abuses trust, and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don't need a technical crime" . . .