How can I impeach thee? Let me count the ways....
Still reeling from the pain of the Mueller report's failure to deliver any additional indictments, Joy Reid this morning fantasized a list of possibly impeachable offenses.
The most hilarious, reflecting Reid's unfamiliarity with the Bill of Rights, was her claim that Trump's "attacking the media" could be grounds for impeachment. Reid said that while the criticism isn't a crime, "it's a violation of the First Amendment in a lot of ways."
Trump's criticism is not a violation of the First Amendment: it's an exercise of it! For Joy's ease of reference, here's the relevant portion of the First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law....abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
Note that opening: "Congress" shall make no law. Trump is not the Congress -- he's the President, and doesn't get to make laws. If Reid needs to brush up on the branches of government, I'm sure Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be happy to explain that there are three of them: "the presidency, the Senate and the House." Or something like that.
Here's the transcript, in which Reid lays out all her imaginary grounds for impeachment. Even she must admit that several of them are on flimsy legal ground.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC's AM Joy
3/24/19
10:14 am EasternJOY REID: And Jill Wine-Banks, in addition to that, is that Mueller was charged with talking about what happened to the 2016 election. Is he, just from your experience on the Watergate committee, also charged with putting forward what in his view what might be an impeachable offenses that are not criminal? Things like obstruction of justice, whether or not it's criminally provable, or collusion which is not technically a crime on the books, violating the emoluments clause, which is not clear what the enforcement mechanism is. Pay for play: basically people checking into his hotels, swiping a card, foreign leaders doing that. Abuse of power. Attacking the media, which isn't a crime but it's a violation of the First Amendment in a lot of ways. Attacking the investigations. Campaign finance laws, corruption, promising pardons, influencing the 2016 election. All of that kind of stuff. Is that something we might expect to be explained in the Mueller report?
JILL WINE-BANKS: I don't think we can necessarily expect it to be explained in the public Mueller report.
