Constitutional Impeachment

“The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”  Article I, Section 2, Clause 5 Constitution of September 17, 1787

The Constitution clearly states that the House of Representatives, and not the Speaker, shall have the sole “Power of Impeachment.” Despite the clarity of the Constitution, on September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she was launching what she called a formal impeachment inquiry into the presidency of President of the United States Donald J. Trump.  The Speaker’s so-called “formal impeachment inquiry” does not follow precedent procedure established by the most recent impeachments of two presidents and two federal judges.  Her deviation from a proven established procedure can be attributed to partisanship and her ignorance of the Constitution of September 17, 1787.  Her “formal impeachment inquiry announcement” demonstrates the knowledge of the Constitution that has been obtained by hearsay accounts collected over many years in the House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi was first elected Representative of a congressional district in San Francisco on June 2, 1987.  She has been reelected every two years to the present and has twice been elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.

 

Speaker Pelosi’s difficulty understanding the Constitution begins with its inception. She believes the Constitution was adopted and became active on September 17, 1787, the day that document was presented to the United States in Congress assembled, the Confederation Congress.  Apparently, she has not read the Constitution, at least not to Article VII which describes what the Constitutional Convention did on September 17, 1787. The delegates to the convention acknowledged by their signatures that the ratification of “this Constitution” by nine States would be sufficient to establish “this Constitution” between those ratifying States.  On that September 17, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had written in Article VII that the kind of government “this Constitution” would establish would begin formation and establishment when the ninth State ratified “this Constitution.” On June 23, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify “this Constitution.”  So far, a date for an official adoption of the Constitution of September 17, 1787 has not been established, because no President of the United States of America has taken and been bound in a signed written oath “to support this Constitution.”

Speaker Pelosi believes the Constitutional Convention delegates including Benjamin Franklin created a Republic. But, what evidence exists that the Constitution of September 17, 1787 created a republic or a democracy?  The only reference to a form of government in the Constitution appears in Article IV, Section 4.  There the United States of America, the Confederacy, “shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”  The States receiving that guarantee are the States formed after the original thirteen joined the Confederacy and the Union refers to the Union formed by the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787. There is no clear evidence that the Constitution created either a democracy or a republic.

The American Democracy was first described in the Preamble to the Constitution as, “We the People of the United States.”  “The People of the United States,” are all the State inhabitants who will first vote for the Delegates who in Convention shall ratify or not the Constitution of September 17, 1787. After ratification, the People of the United States shall as citizens of the United States elect members of the House of Representatives and later vote for the Electors who would elect the President of the United States of America.  The people who declare themselves to be “citizens of the United States” admit to being residents within the United States, the federal territory.

Please read critically Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry announcement. Pay close attention to the words: “adopted,” “democracy,” “republic,” which are prominent in either the announcement or the Constitution. 

The government Speaker Pelosi believes to be the American Republic is actually the deep administrative state composed of all the federal territory owned or ceded to the Confederacy, The United States of America.  Article I, of the Constitution of September 17, 1787, contains all the components of the administrative state which are claimed to be the three branches of government.  These include the 2-year Congress of the United States, the Chief Justice and the President of the United States whose oral oath of office was placed in Article II, so that the two presidents would be joined as one. What made this conflation of the two offices of President possible?  The President of the United States of America became President when the winning Electoral College votes were counted and the President of the United States became President when he took the oral oath of office.

The relevant portions of Speaker Pelosi’s announcement appears below:
Last Tuesday, we observed the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution on September 17.
***
On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our Constitution was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall to await the news of the government our Founders had crafted. They asked Benjamin Franklin, ‘what do we have—a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin replied, ‘a republic, if you can keep it.’ Our responsibility is to keep it.
Our republic endures because of the wisdom of our Constitution, enshrined in three co-equal branches of government serving as checks and balances on each other. The actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution, especially when the president says ‘Article II says I can do whatever I want.’

For the past several months we have been investigating in our committees and litigating in the courts, so the House can gather all the relevant facts, and consider whether to exercise its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity—approval of articles of impeachment.
And this week, the President has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically. The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.

Therefore today, I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I’m directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.

Getting back to our Founders. In the darkest days of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, ‘the times have found us.’ The times found them, to fight for and establish our democracy. The times have found us today, not to place ourselves in the same category of greatness as our founders, but to place us in the urgency of protecting and defending our Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. In the words of Ben Franklin, to keep our republic. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/24/politics/pelosi-impeachment-transcript/index.html

 

The Basic Course in Law and Government teaches that taking and being bound by the Article VI oath “to support this Constitution” by the President of the United States of America results in the Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, “Adoption of this Constitution.” The legislative President of the United States takes the oral oath of “the Office of the President of the United States to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United State of,” a different place and a different oath.

If Pelosi had spent more time studying the law of impeachment in the Constitution, she might have discovered that there are two different offices of President—President of the United States and President of the United States of America, subject to different rules of impeachment.  The only rule of impeachment expressly applicable only to the Office of the President of the United States is found in Article I, Section 3, Clause 6: “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.”


Article II, Section 4, applies only to: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  This constitutional law applies only to the President and Vice President of the United States of America and all civil officers of the United States of America.  Impeachment of the President of the United States does not require the commission of a crime, which makes removal of that officer much simpler than the impeachment and removal of the President of the United States of America.

I have demonstrated in this post Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi’s ignorance of the Constitution of September 17, 1787.  Article VII expressly states when and where it will be active and effective—after being ratified by at least nine States— “Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same” will have occurred.    This Constitution uses words that obtain a specific restricted meaning by that use. The phrase, “Adoption of this Constitution” appears twice in the Constitution in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, and in Article VI, Clause 1, in a way that requires “Adoption” to take place after “Establishment” and the election of the President of the United States of America.   Pelosi has not learned that characteristic of the Constitution and because that knowledge has not been learned she is executing her office in an unconstitutional way.

My Basic Course in Law and Government will arm you with the facts you’ll need to reclaim the freedom that has been taken from you by elected leaders like Speaker Pelosi, who is third in line to succeed the president. Just by reading this post, you have learned more about the Constitution than Speaker Pelosi has acquired from thirty years in federal public office.  Speaker Pelosi does not know the office of President of the United States is an employment and the President of the United States of America is a public office.  Impeachment of the President of the United States requires only that the Chief Justice presides at the trial, while the President of the United States of America can only be impeached “for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Had Speaker Pelosi learned the kind of constitutional law taught in the Basic Course in Law and Government and if she had the necessary votes in the House of Representatives, she could have attempted the impeachment of both President of the United States Donald J. Trump and Vice President of the United States Michael R. Pence.  Trump can be impeached according to Article II and Pence according to Article I. Conviction and removal of these two officers might not be possible in the Senate, but the impeachments would certainly cause confusions and consternation among the professions concerned with the law. 

Studying federal impeachment law in the Basic Course in Law and Government should never cause confusion or consternation to the student.  Learning how to separate the two forms of impeachment law affords the novice law student an additional means by which to understand the two forms of local administrative government in Article I, and national confederation government in Article II.  Speaker Pelosi may be third in line to succeed President, but Donald John Trump as both President of the United States and President of the United States of America “runs the country.” And he does this exceedingly well by applying the small government approach to both offices.  The Trump presidency presents a unique opportunity to achieve substantial reduction in the size of all governments by providing this commander-in-chief with enough real facts about the Constitution. His record of consideration of all opinions in matters of Barack Hussein Obama’s birth assures us that he will be and has been receptive to our interpretations of the Constitution.

Since its inception the Constitution of September 17, 1787 has been misinterpreted to apply to the inhabitants of the States which comprised the Confederacy, The United States of America. Even during its drafting, the Constitution’s meaning has been manipulated to the advantage of the politicians and the bureaucrats in government. “Deep State” government is what we have today.  It is the product of years of abuse in the interpretation of what the Constitution really means. The “Deep State” government, headed by Speaker Pelosi, is dangerously close to becoming deeper and more socialist unless politicians such as Pelosi and Representative Adam Schiff, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee conducting the preliminary impeachment inquiry, are shown to be without authority.  The sole power of impeachment is granted to a House of Representatives and not to the Speaker pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 5,: “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”  This means that the full House of Representatives must vote on whether or not to launch a preliminary impeachment inquiry. 

My Basic Course in Law and Government will arm you with the facts you’ll need to reclaim your freedom from rampant government bureaucracies. Remember that you can now enroll in the Basic Course in Law and Government on an installment payment plan which you can personally arrange with me at edrivera@edrivera.com

Dr. Eduardo M. Rivera 

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