President Trump and the FBI under scrutiny

Both the President of the United States and the Federal Bureau of Investigation took turns in the spotlight this past week, absorbing allegations from the U.S. House of Representatives and the Inspector General of the Department of Justice.

First, the president

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced the two articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. The House Democrats are pursuing two articles of impeachment against President Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Democrats wrote the first article, abuse of power, because President Trump withheld funds to Ukraine in an attempt to get that government to open an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden. Democrats claim that’s a threat to the 2020 election, in which Biden is one of the Democratic front-runners.

The second article, obstruction of Congress, is inspired by the accusations of Trump’s instructions to White House staff to withhold documents sought by investigative committees and to not cooperate with the investigation by appearing in front of Congress, which is supposed to practice oversight of the Executive Branch.

A simple majority vote (which is currently 21 votes) in favor of approving the articles of impeachment of the members of the House Judiciary Committee is necessary. If the articles receive those 21 votes from the House Judiciary Committee the articles would then move to the full House of Representatives to be voted on (also needing a simple majority vote of 218 votes).

So, what’s next in the process? Basically, if the articles are approved by both the House Judiciary Committee and the full House of Representatives, President Trump will be impeached, and then a trial will begin in the U.S. Senate. Two-thirds of that body would have to vote to remove the President from office. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said the trial could begin in early January.

Stay tuned, but most political pundits expect the Democratically controlled House to vote for impeachment, but for the Republican-led Senate to not reach the 67-vote threshold to remove the president from office.

Not the first time

The last Senate trial of a president occurred in February 1999 when President Bill Clinton was impeached by Congress on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Clinton lied to a grand jury about having had sexual encounters with a White House intern. Only 45 of the 100 senators voted to convict Clinton of perjury, and only 50 voted to convict him of obstruction of justice, so Clinton served the final two years of his second term as president.

In 1974, the House of Representatives drew up articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, but Nixon resigned in August 1974 before the House could vote on impeachment and move to a Senate trial.

In 1868, President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House on 11 charges. By the time the trial occurred in the Senate, only three of the original charges were voted on. At the time, only 27 of the 37 states had representation in the Senate because 10 Southern states had not been fully re-admitted into the Union after rebelling against the U.S. and fighting a civil war against it. As a result, only 54 senators voted in the trial, and 35 voted to convict Johnson. That was one vote shy of the two-thirds threshold required to remove him from office, and Johnson served out his final 10 months in office.

The FBI did what?

On Wednesday, Justice Department nonpartisan Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report on the origins of the investigation that eventually led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller conducting an investigation in Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The FBI’s work and Mueller’s investigation resulted in more than 30 people being indicted, convicted and/or thrown in jail. That includes former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen and longtime Trump friend Roger Stone.

However, the president and others — including Attorney General William Barr — accused the FBI of “spying” on the president’s campaign. The IG’s report exposed some obvious blunders by the FBI in conducting its investigation, including some potentially egregious errors in seeking information about one former Trump campaign member, Carter Page. However, the IG’s final conclusion is that the investigation was legitimate. The ironic part? AG Barr, Horowitz’s “boss,” made public statements that he thinks Horowitz’s report was itself flawed.

So much more to come.

Finally, the foundation

Good gracious it was a busy week.

At about the same time on Tuesday that House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against the president, the New York Attorney General’s Office reported a settlement in the 2018 lawsuit against the president for misusing funds in his charitable foundation, paying off business debt and funneling money to his presidential campaign.

In the settlement, Trump admitted to misusing the funds and three of his adult children — Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric — all were required to undergo a mandatory training program to ensure they wouldn’t again engage in such activity. The three were officers of the foundation.

Also, the remaining $1.8 million in the Donald J. Trump Foundation was disbursed to eight different charities.

This is a separate settlement from the $25 million 2018 settlement in which the president re-paid money to disgruntled former students of the online Trump University.