Romney to vote to convict Trump on impeachment charge of abuse of power, becoming the f... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...a-ab15-b5df3261b710_story.html
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shared by Javier E on 06 Feb 20
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“He’s the leader of my party,” Romney said of Trump. “He’s the president of the United States. I voted with him 80 percent of the time. I agree with his economic policies and a lot of other policies. And yet he did something which was grievously wrong. And to say, well, you know, because I’m on his team and I agree with him most of the time, that I should then assent to a political motive, would be a real stain on our constitutional democracy.”
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“I was hoping beyond hope that the defense would present evidence, exculpatory evidence, that would remove from me the responsibility to vote where my conscience was telling me I had to vote,” he said. “And that’s one of the reasons, by the way, that I wanted to hear from Bolton, which is I hoped he would testify and raise reasonable doubt.”
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Romney dismissed arguments that a president could be impeached only if there were a statutory crime, calling that “absurd on its face,” and saying he could not think of “a more egregious assault on our constitutional system than corrupting an election and getting a foreign power to do it for you.” What Trump tried to do, he said, is “what autocrats do in tinhorn countries.”
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He also dismissed the arguments that the president was justified in asking Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. He said the former vice president might have been guilty of a conflict of interest, but added that a conflict of interest is “a matter of judgment, but it’s not a crime.” As for Hunter Biden, he said, “He got a lot of money for his father’s name. That’s unsavory. But again, it’s not a crime.”
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Some of Romney’s Republican colleagues have suggested that the issue should be left to the voters in this year’s election, rather than having the Senate render judgment. Romney said his reading of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers led him to conclude that the Senate must make the decision.
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“The Constitution doesn’t say that if the president did something terribly wrong, let the people decide in the next election what should happen,” he said. “It says if the president does something terribly wrong, the Senate shall try him. And so the Constitution is plain.”
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“It’s going to go to the people, and they will make the final decision,” he said, adding that he is “highly confident” the president will be reelected. “Given the strength of the economy and the record established so far, I believe he gets reelected. And I think if they [Democrats] nominate [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders of Vermont] or [Sen.] Elizabeth [Warren of Massachusetts], he’ll get elected in a landslide.”
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Romney also knows that his vote to remove the president from office will bring consequences. Already there is a bill in the Utah legislature that would allow voters to remove a sitting senator. He expects worse in the days ahead
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“But again, how do I say before God, ‘I agreed to render impartial justice and let the consequences for me personally outweigh my duty to God and my duty to be to the country that I love?’ And that’s simply putting my head down and saying what was done was perfect, there’s nothing to see here was not something I could do.”