Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee laid the foundation for convicting ex-president Donald Trump late on Jan. 6, after peace was restored in Congress.
“Our job is to open and then count,” Lee said, “Open, then count. That’s it. That’s all there is.”
Until that night the count had always been a formality, even when on rare occasions members lodged protests.
The mob saw that count differently and their ideas came from a known source. Trump had told them that his “landslide victory was stolen,” that Jan. 6 was the last chance they would have to “stop the steal.”
Trump did not lay out clear plans for that day. He is adept at maintaining plausible deniability. Many of the insurrectionists storming the Capitol, however, did make plans, ones that included handcuffs and maps of routes to the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They detailed these plans in a trail of internet chatter leading up to Jan. 6.
Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and to see that its laws were faithfully executed. The presidential election procedure is mandated by both the Constitution and by the law he swore to uphold. As chief executive, he had a greater duty than any other citizen to defend the legitimacy of this election. His falsehoods instead destroyed its legitimacy in the eyes of tens of millions of citizens.
There is no issue of First Amendment free speech here. Congress has made no law forbidding him to speak his mind, he risks no legal penalty for telling election falsehoods. This is a matter of fulfilling his oath; his flaunting of his oath should be an impeachable offense. With every tweet claiming that he “won in a landslide,” or that “the election was rigged,” he was oath-bound to factually confirm the truth of his words before hitting “send.”
There’s no disputing the fact that the Jan. 6 mob assembled in Washington at his summons, or that their “stop the steal” beliefs sprouted from his words. They assembled before the platform that he erected on this usually uneventful day, listened to the speakers he chose, who told them that “it was time to kick ass and take names,” told them that it “was time for trial by combat.” His failure to condemn those statements can only be seen as an endorsement of them.
Lee and 45 Republican senators voted to claim that this impeachment trial is unconstitutional, a vote that seems based on political expediency. As a constitutional scholar, Lee doubtless knows that the founders modeled our impeachment clause after the British procedure, which at the time was in use impeaching former office holders.
The founders knew of and discussed these facts as they wrote the clause, and included a penalty separate from removal from office; banning from holding federal office again. We now have legal precedent in our own history for the impeachment trials of former office holders.
The only question remaining is whether Lee and his fellow party members will condemn or endorse this presidential assault on the legitimacy of our election. Our tradition demands that presidents accept and support election results. This tradition has made possible perhaps the most important feature of our Republic, the regular and peaceful transfer of power.
President George Washington created this tradition, gracefully leaving office after two terms. This may have been the most important presidential act in U.S. history. Hopefully, Lee reveres this tradition more than he does his position of privilege and power. Hopefully, he is willing to risk his own interests to defend those of our country.
John Griswold
John Griswold, Millcreek, is a long-time Utah resident, carpenter and contractor, now retired, artist and freelance writer.
