Trump Neglecting Oath of Office to Uphold Our Laws: Serious Cause for Removal

I wish to hear: “Therefore I will resign the presidency 
effective at noon tomorrow”

The precedence was set August 8, 1974
(3:49 minutes)

For this post, an excellent legal analysis here from Alternet.org on the legal jeopardy that Trump now faces (i.e., not upholding the laws of the land he has sworn to uphold).

President Trump’s EO to effectively sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — aka: Obamacare — crossed a new legal threshold that could become part of a growing list of ultimately impeachable actions, much like Richard Nixon faced a deepening list of offenses before he resigned from office following the Watergate mess.

That’s because Trump’s willful destruction of Obamacare, a law passed by the Congress — not a regulation promulgated by federal departments — would violate his oath to uphold the Constitution, whose Article Two demands that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”    

Trying to destroy the law through non-enforcement isn’t just a normal exercise of presidential discretion,” Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School professor and legal columnist, wrote this summer for Bloomberg.com, anticipating Trump’s actions and discussing the Constitution's “Take Care” clause.

Specifically that “take care” Constitutional clause: “… recognizes that the president can’t necessarily enforce every law, but it requires a good-faith effort. Declining to enforce the law so that the law itself ceases to be able to function isn’t good faith.”

What’s new and different about Trump’s presidency at this time is his actions —and his threats tied to governmental actions — which are clashing with different constitutional duties and rights he has sworn to uphold. These are being noticed by legal scholars like Feldman, members of Congress, political insiders, and pundits on the right and left.

Seen in isolation, Trump’s anti-constitutional actions:

1. Attacking the press and free expression (First Amendment),

2. Taking the military into Syria without congressional approval (Article One, Section 8), 

3. Profiting from foreign governments’ use of his properties (Article One, Section 9), and

4.  Abusing his pardon powers (Article Two) by pardoning white nationalist Joe Arpaio doesn’t seem to add up to much.

But collectively, they are triggering and crossing constitutional thresholds in a manner that has little precedent.

My view: It seems clear to me and millions of others I wager that Trump either: (1) does not know or doesn’t understand or care to know, if he knows, he legal jeopardy; or, (2) he is getting poor advice from White House lawyers that is both misleading and false and thus doesn’t speak well for their character or legal knowledge.

Conversely, if W/H lawyers are in fact giving him good sound legal advice about things outlined above and in the article, which show his borderline abuses and he still ignores their sound legal advice, then that’s a whole new “can of worms” as the expression says.

Either way, Mr. Trump should be put on legal public notice by Congress that he is in legal jeopardy for not upholding laws he has sworn to uphold and that none of his EO’s can change or modify laws – only Congress can do that.

Thus, Donald J. Trump is perhaps in “final jeopardy as it were” with only two options to win: Slim and none.

Stay tuned.

And, thanks for stopping by.