During the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, the twice-impeached, convicted felon president has waged an unprecedented war on the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and attacked the very foundations of American democracy. Trump has ordered the illegal dismantling of entire federal agencies, deployed National Guard troops to U.S. cities and masked secret police to enforce a brutal mass deportation campaign, ordered the prosecution — and even the execution of his perceived political enemies, censored U.S. history in federally-funded museums and libraries and employed the FCC to suppress free speech.
The Republican party in control of both the House and Senate has fully embraced Trump’s exercise of limitless executive power with no checks and balances, and through their inaction demonstrated total contempt for the constitution’s establishment of three co-equal branches of government and the separation of powers. The U.S. Supreme Court with their 6 to 3 super majority of right-wing extremist justices, has enabled Trump’s demolition of democracy through a series of unprecedented rulings — many made without explanation through what’s known as the shadow docket.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney, and co-founder and president of the group Free Speech For People. Here he discusses Rep. Al Green’s recent introduction of articles of impeachment against Trump, and his advice to the bipartisan group of legislators in Congress angry that Trump’s Department of Justice has blatantly failed to comply with the Dec. 19 deadline to release all the government records under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
JOHN BONIFAZ: We’ve been proud to work in partnership with Congressman Green and so appreciate his leadership on this critical question. He has introduces as you highlight, articles of impeachment that focus on two separate abuses of power.
First, the threat that Donald Trump made to execute members of Congress. These are members of Congress who produced a video that was a message basically to our armed forces, to members of the military, that they have a duty to only obey lawful orders and not to obey unlawful orders. That’s well understood in the military code of conduct in terms of how they should operate. So they were not saying anything controversial. But Donald Trump decided based on that video, he would threaten to have them executed. And that is an abuse of power and impeachable offense that was the subject of the first article.
The second article in this same document focused on Donald Trump’s repeated threats to federal judges all over the country, intimidating them and in many cases leading to threats of political violence against them. And that, too, is an abuse of power and impeachable offense and attack on the U.S. judiciary. So both of these articles were presented in early December, Dec. 11, and there was a vote forced on those articles.
So 140 members voted to advance the articles. They voted no on tabling. Twenty-three some members of the Democratic Caucus voted with all the Republican members to table. So it won and the motion was granted. But what’s significant here is that that 140 number is a 77 percent increase from when Congressman Green forced a vote in June on articles of impeachment dealing with the illegal and unconstitutional bombing of Iran, which we also worked with him on. There, there are only 79 members of Congress, and now we had a jump all the way to 140 and also significant.
Forty-seven members in this last vote appeared “present.” They refused to vote no or yes. On the motion, they voted present. And what that I think demonstrates is that there are a number of members that were too scared, frankly, to go back to their constituents and have to explain why they voted against advancing articles of impeachment. And that’s a significant development and demonstrates that this movement is being built from the grassroots up and people’s voices are being heard.
SCOTT HARRIS: John, I did want to ask you about the Epstein files. Given that there’s a lot of concern that overwhelmingly the House and the Senate all voted, I think all but one legislator voted for the Epstein Files Release Act. The Justice Department that was due to produce these files on Friday failed miserably, right? A lot of redactions, hundreds and perhaps thousands of pages redacted, and only 5 percent of the files have been released. There’s been discussion about holding Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt or maybe trying to impeach her. But as a constitutional lawyer, what do you think is appropriate in this moment given there’s so much bipartisan concern about the Epstein files and a lot of folks on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, who want to see that act complied with?
The deadline has passed and those articles need to be introduced and not only should they be introduced, but a vote should be forced on the floor against Pam Bondi and Donald Trump. There’s no excuse, frankly, for members of Congress not to proceed in that way. Anything short of it is effectively, again, ceding this very remedy that’s in the Constitution to address this kind of defiance of the law. And that’s the way we deal with that is through the impeachment process.
So I hope and believe there will be more and more voices coming forward to demand that the impeachment process begin against this president.
For more information, visit Free Speech For People at freespeechforpeople.
John Bonifaz is co-author of the 2018 book, “The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.”
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with John Bonifaz (17:31) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
