[EL] more news 9/27/19

Fri Sep 27 10:06:35 PDT 2019

My New One @Slate on Why a Quick and Laser-focused Impeachment Process on the Ukraine Matter is Justified Precisely Because the Claim is about Election Interference in 2020.<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107499>
Posted on September 27, 2019 10:02 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107499> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I have written this piece<https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/democrats-should-impeach-donald-trump-fast-ukraine.html> for Slate. Here is my key point:

What Democrats need, then, is a clean impeachment strategy laser-focused on the Ukraine allegations. The allegation is easy to understand and does not require a Carrie Mathison cork board connecting the cast of characters with yarn. President Trump solicited a foreign government to provide dirt, perhaps manufactured, on one of his political rivals, Joe Biden, who he may face in the 2020 presidential election. Trump did so while the United States was withholding crucial financial aid from the Ukraine, reportedly at his behest alone. Trump professed a concern about “corruption,” but so far as we know the only supposed corruption he has ever expressed any concern about involved generally unsubstantiated allegations about Biden’s family, or other personal political and legal foes.

The story is clear whether we hear from the whistleblower directly or not. The President has admitted the conduct; he disputes only its wrongfulness, describing his call as “very legal and very good<https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1177543516236500997>.” And already today there is enough for the House to conclude that the president has abused his power and is worthy of impeachment. That’s true whether or not the solicitation of foreign opposition research is a campaign finance crime—I believe it is<https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/trump-ukraine-campaign-finance-crime.html?via=recirc_recent> and Special Counsel Robert Mueller suggested it could be illegal as well even as he raised what he considered to be First Amendment issues—and it is true whether or not Trump’s conduct as reported in the partial summary of the conversation with Ukraine’s president amounted to the crime of extortion or bribery. The mafia-like shakedown by Trump—along the lines of: That’s a really nice country you have; it would be a shame if something happened to it—needs to be condemned whether it amounted to a technical violation of the law or not.

And this is the key point: the ordinary argument that an impeachment close to the election is unnecessary because the voters can decide whether or not to keep the president in office does not hold water when the impeachable conduct involves attempting to manipulate the election process itself. It is indeed a matter of national security if the president is seeking to use the power of his office—and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money—to get a weaker foreign government to do his bidding in coordination with his personal lawyer.
Sure, the Republican-dominated Senate might not convict the president with a necessary two-thirds vote if the House impeaches (although the silence from many Republican Senators suggests they are still deciding what do to). But impeaching the president for an abuse of power in soliciting foreign help in the election will serve three purposes even if there is no conviction and removal from office.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D107499&title=My%20New%20One%20%40Slate%20on%20Why%20a%20Quick%20and%20Laser-focused%20Impeachment%20Process%20on%20the%20Ukraine%20Matter%20is%20Justified%20Precisely%20Because%20the%20Claim%20is%20about%20Election%20Interference%20in%202020.>
Posted in chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

Democrats File New Lawsuit Challenging North Carolina Congressional Districts as Unconstitutional Partisan Gerrymandering Under the State Constitution; Too Late?<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107497>
Posted on September 27, 2019 9:56 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107497> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

You can find the complaint here<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6432685-Signed-Complaint.html>.

Here is what I wrote <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107202> when a three-judge state court struck state legislative districts as a partisan gerrymander:

First, it is not clear that there is enough time to bring such a challenge and get it done in time to affect the 2020 elections, the last elections to be used under the existing maps before the next round of redistricting. I am surprised there was not a state case against the congressional districts in the works earlier, and given discovery and potential appeals, and the upcoming calendar, it may just be too late. Even if state courts do not follow the Purcell Principle<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2545676>, at some point changing district lines comes too late.

Second, it is not clear to me that the ruling earlier this week has any precedential value in a challenge to congressional maps. Nick Stephanapoulos writes<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107198>: “the North Carolina decision is just as applicable to congressional as to state legislative districts. North Carolina’s gerrymandered congressional plan—the plan the Supreme Court failed to invalidate in Rucho—is thus on thin ice. And so will be any efforts by the North Carolina legislature to gerrymander (or even to consider partisanship) in the 2020 redistricting cycle. As long as the North Carolina decision remains good law, North Carolina maps must be nonpartisan.” But I’m not sure that this is right.

The recent state decision was a state trial court, and I do not know that it is binding precedent in any challenge to the congressional maps. Perhaps under North Carolina law the new challenge would go before the same three-judge court. If not, generally speaking, trial court rulings are not precedential for other trial courts. Indeed, as I’ve explained<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107179>, one of the reasons that North Carolina Republicans may have thrown in the towel on the state legislative race was to avoid a likely adverse opinion from the state supreme court, which would have been a definitive ruling on the meaning of the state constitution.
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D107497&title=Democrats%20File%20New%20Lawsuit%20Challenging%20North%20Carolina%20Congressional%20Districts%20as%20Unconstitutional%20Partisan%20Gerrymandering%20Under%20the%20State%20Constitution%3B%20Too%20Late%3F>
Posted in redistricting<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>

“NRA’s Ties to Russian Nationals Detailed in New Report”<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107495>
Posted on September 27, 2019 9:49 am<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=107495> by Rick Hasen<https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

WSJ:<https://www.wsj.com/articles/nras-ties-to-russian-nationals-detailed-in-new-report-11569593888?mod=djemalertNEWS>

National Rifle Association funds paid for lodging and travel of Russian nationals throughout 2015 and 2016, as part of a relationship that allowed foreign actors looking to influence the U.S. election, including now-convicted Maria Butina, to infiltrate the gun-rights group, a new report asserts.

The report, released Friday by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee<https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/NRAMinReport.pdf?mod=article_inline>, also says NRA leaders traveled to Moscow in December 2015 partly on the NRA’s dime, even though some went there to pursue their own personal business opportunities. This raises questions, the report says, about whether they violated laws on how nonprofit funds can be used.

The trip to Moscow gave Russians an opening to the organization as the election was ramping up, as well as access to other events involving Republican party leaders, the Democrats say.

The committee’s Republican majority issued a rebuttal<https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/NRAMajReport.pdf?mod=article_inline>, saying the Democrats are using “facts and innuendo” about the NRA-Russia ties that “together demonstrate little to nothing,” and said the “extent of the evidence reviewed does not raise concerns the NRA abused its tax-exempt purposes when some of its high-ranking officials traveled to Russia in December 2015.”
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D107495&title=%E2%80%9CNRA%E2%80%99s%20Ties%20to%20Russian%20Nationals%20Detailed%20in%20New%20Report%E2%80%9D>
Posted in campaigns<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20190927/3d2d2b45/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 2021 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20190927/3d2d2b45/attachment.png>