Matt Whitaker’s Appointment May Be Illegal, Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano Says

Mueller gets fired, Mueller tells chief counsel for the Dem judiciary committee where to look and to whom to talk.

 

Correct. He will probably do that, fired or not.

 

What did he fail to do??????

 

Those articles which you're now 21 votes short of getting a conviction for?

Oh right, those articles of impeachment.

 

Are you also saying the Senate will not impeach Trump, no matter the evidence?

 

Are you admitting that the Republican party has no integrity remaining?

 

No, I'm admitting that there's a better chance that you get impeached and convicted over a position you're not in for putting words in my mouth than of Trump getting impeached and convicted of anything.

 

We're talking about impeachment and conviction with the current allegations and evidence at hand.

He will be impeached no doubt. Democrats control the House now. He won't be convicted.

 

Gotcha, that clears it up.

I don't think they will impeach just yet.

 

I think they have to wait.

They burned any capital they had with Trump-Russia during the Kavanaugh debacle. Given how short the news cycles are these days I'd be surprised if the public even remembers all these fake accusations.

So they need a month or two to really lie hard and bald faced so it gets back in the news.

 

I'll jump in. The senate will not convict Trump on any impeachment. There is no evidence of any high crimes and misdemeanors, and only some of the Democrat senators will go along with whatever the House might dream up.

 

LMAO....Still hanging out in the Twilight Zone, I see.

When you finally learn about politics or think you know something about then come se me. As talking ****....you lose that game each and every time.

Face Facts Jake....you're just not good at bringing the Disrespect.

 

You Never Trumpers never learn Shanks. Wrong again you are.


Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998

The Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 is a United States law that establishes the procedure for a filling a vacancy in an appointed officer of an executive agency during the time before a permanent replacement is appointed.

The law designates three classes of people who may serve as acting officials:[1]

• By default, "the first assistant to the office" becomes the acting officer.
• The President may direct a person currently serving in a different Senate-confirmed position to serve as acting officer.
• The President can select a senior "officer or employee" of the same executive agency, if that employee served in that agency for at least 90 days during the year preceding the vacancy, and is paid at a rate equivalent to at least a GS-15 on the federal pay scale.

It requires the executive branch departments and agencies to report to Congress and Government Accountability Office (GAO) information about the temporary filling of vacant executive agency positions that require presidential appointment with Senate confirmation. The act requires the Comptroller General report to specified congressional committees, the president, and the Office of Personnel Management if an acting officer is determined to be serving longer than the 210 days (including applicable exceptions established by the act).[2] …..snip~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Vacancies_Reform_Act_of_1998


Before we go into the Article One control of the AG,


HUGH HEWITT: Now, the thing that the Senator, who is a friend, doesn't get is that if the Attorney General resigns or is fired, the President under the Vacancies Act can move over Dan Coats, Alex Acosta from HHS-- I mean, from Labor, Secretary Azar from HHS, any of the fine lawyers in the administration for 210 days. And then if he nominates a new Attorney General, say, a Mike Luttig, who was the runner up to be the Chief Justice, then another 210 days. So you have 420 days of an acting Attorney General, who would be in charge of the Russia investigation.....snip~


http://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses/jeff-sessions-president-trump-and-the-department-of-justice

Check with some real constitutional attorneys for a change.

 

Hmm... and yet, he was a fixture in the DOJ for all the shenanigans.... During the election..... Seems problematic to me...

 

You need to choose between two conflicting laws to determine legality. Both Natpolitano and Trump are correct depending on which law you prefer. Ain't law fun?

 

Kelly Anne Conway's husband agrees, the appointment was illegal.

 

I do not think the house will impeach unless there is solid evidence of high crimes. If there is such evidence and several GOP congressmen vote to impeach along with Democrats, there is a great possibility that many GOP Senators will also vote to remove. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Pence had to vote to break a tie? That would really be a dilemma for him. I have yet to see any such evidence at this point, but neither you or I can say for certain whether it does or does not exist. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

 

You need 2/3 to vote to convict on impeachment, no?

 

Reaching conclusions like that before Mueller issues his report are premature. Though it is unlikely, no matter what the report contains, that Senate Repubs will act according to the evidence.

 

This nobody is going nowhere. The guy was even participant in fraud over a hot tub scam. The Senate is giving Trump hell over this. Watch Trump walk this one back. Does Trump ever think before acting?

 

You sissied out of answering the question.

 

Correct.

 

Trump has a very Trumpified Senate right now. I think he is prepared to use them to back up the most ridiculous nonsense. Hopefully the Florida reccount costs him a Senate seat.

 

Talk of impeachment has to follow evidence. Otherwise it is the cart before the horse. The House does not (assuming broadly that they have some intention of following the Constitution) hold impeachment hearings to see what might turn up.
A Senate impeachment trial requires 2/3 vote, and Pence is not the President of the Senate; the Chief Justice is.

 

Matthew Whitaker’s Appointment as Acting Attorney General Is Illegal
Let Clarence Thomas explain.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/11/matthew-whitaker-jeff-sessions-replacement-illegal.html

...In their reading, Whitaker’s elevation marks an illegal effort to let a constitutional “nobody” seize control of the DOJ in violation of key constitutional safeguards.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would almost certainly agree. In a 2017 concurring opinion, Thomas declared that the president may Never appoint a principal officer without Senate confirmation, even to fill a vacancy for a limited period. The fact that an appointment is temporary, or that the appointee serves in an “acting” capacity, “does not change the analysis,” Thomas wrote. “I do not think the structural protections of the Appointments Clause can be avoided based on such trivial distinctions.”

Trump appointed Whitaker under the Federal Vacancy Reform Act, which allows him to serve for 210 days, or longer if a replacement is awaiting Senate confirmation when the term expires. But as Thomas wrote in 2017, the president Cannot use the FVRA to make an “end-run around the Appointments Clause.” Any federal criminal defendant can sue to block his prosecution, citing Thomas’ logic to argue that Whitaker is exercising his powers unlawfully. This theory may appeal to conservative judges who’ve long opposed the modern trend of presidents sidestepping the Senate’s advice and consent function.

Even if this constitutional claim fails, there are two statutory reasons why Whitaker might not be permitted to serve as acting attorney general. Both revolve around technical aspects of the FVRA, but I promise they aren’t as confusing as you might expect.

2. Justice Department Succession Rules
As I noted above, the Trump administration is relying on the FVRA to justify replacing Sessions with Whitaker. But there’s a fundamental problem with this interpretation: It’s debatable whether that law even applies here. The FVRA deals with Cabinet-level vacancies in general terms—but Congress has passed a more specific statute directly governing succession at the Department of Justice.

That law, Section 508, states that “in case of a vacancy in the office of Attorney General,” the deputy attorney general “may exercise all the duties of that office.” This rule would require Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to step in as acting attorney general—and continue overseeing the Mueller investigation. The FVRA, by contrast, allows the president to authorize “an acting official to perform the functions and duties of any office” in an executive agency temporarily when an official resigns. But the FVRA states that it is not the “exclusive means” for filling a vacancy when a different “statutory provision expressly … designates an officer” to step in “temporarily in an acting capacity.” Section 508 does precisely that, assigning the deputy attorney general the “duties” of the attorney general.

Trump’s lawyers seem to believe that the FVRA overrides Section 508. And the Office of Legal Counsel concluded as much in 2007. But as John E. Bies has noted at Lawfare, a specific statute (like Section 50 typically takes precedence over a general one (like the FVRA). Congress passed the FVRA to deal broadly with the issue of executive vacancies; it passed Section 508 to deal specificallywith the issue of vacancies in the attorney general’s office. A defendant could argue that Section 508 overrides the FVRA and, as a result, Rosenstein must step into Sessions’ role—not Whitaker.

3. Resignation vs. Termination
There’s a final reason the FVRA might not apply in this situation. The law permits the president to temporarily replace an executive branch officer with a long-serving official in the agency or an individual who has already been confirmed by the Senate for another position. But this rule only kicks in when the officer “dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to perform the functions and duties of the office.”...
`​