When Republicans say that there is not a fact witness, what they are not clarifying is that no witness has proven specific intent. For example, if you get into a car accident and kill someone, you are not likely to be charged with murder unless the prosecutor can prove specific intent, it’s not up to the witnesses. You will get prosecuted for manslaughter due to general intent, but the opinion of the passengers will not play a part in determining your specific intent unless they have physical evidence of you claiming that you are going to mow someone down.
So, no, there has been no evidence of Trump conveying in ANY capacity that the reason he wanted an investigation was to win the 2020 elections. Do you have the recording, like with Nixon, of the President saying, “We are going to investigate Biden so that I can win the 2020 election?” None of the witnesses have provided anything but conjecture.
In Trump’s case, one must first inquire whether the President has Constitutional authority regarding foreign relations. The answer is yes.
Next, is the President’s inquiry reasonable? In other words, this question must shift the focus on VP Biden. Would a reasonable person question why the son of VP is on the board of a notoriously corrupt company within a country that is also notoriously corrupt? Why did the VP threaten a foreign prosecutor who was investigating his son’s shady organization? How can one say Trump is causing interference by requesting Binden’s investigation, that did not occur, while not acknowledging Biden’s interference that did occur, to the documented fact of him telling the story about having the Ukrainian prosecutor removed. He wasn’t the President who has Constitutional authority, which is why he said, “They said you aren’t the President [to withhold $1B], and I said, 'Call him, you have six hours [to fire the prosecutor].”
Hunter acknowledged himself that he should not have been on the board, even for the sake of the appearance of conflict of interest in the public interview that he did.
Therefore, as an American citizen and voter, I can assure you that many want confirmation that no conflict of interest was breached by our former VP. As such, a request for investigation is warranted.
Furthermore, you throw around ‘abuse of power’ as if you can reference where the scope of that abuse is identified in the law for the executive branch, much less defined. For example, the Code of Federal Regulations would be a good place to start for identifying laws that apply to federal employees. However C.F.R. 5 does not apply to the President of the United States (See 5 CFR § 2641.104 - Definitions. Employee).
So, what you are left with is the Constitution, where the word abuse does not appear, and decisions made by the Supreme Court to establish scope of Executive Power, which is where you get United States vs. Curtuss-Wright Export Corp., are paramount. There, the Supreme Court ruled:
(2) The powers of the Federal Government over foreign or external affairs differ in nature and origin from those over domestic or internal affairs.
(6) The Constitution was ordained and established, among other things, to form “a more perfect Union.” Prior to that event, the Union, declared by the Articles of Confederation to be “perpetual,” was the sole possessor of external sovereignty, and in the Union it remained without change save insofar as the Constitution, in express terms, qualified its exercise. Though the States were several, their people, in respect of foreign affairs, were one.
(9) In international relations, the President is the sole organ of the Federal Government.
(10) In view of the delicacy of foreign relations and of the power peculiar to the President in this regard, Congressional legislation which is to be made effective in the international field must often accord to him a degree of discretion and freedom which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved.
So, the President did NOT brake the law, no witness has PRODUCED evidence beyond conjecture (which is not evidence), and the Supreme Court has defined a foreign policy scope that the Congress has no right to interfere.
Justice Sutherland, majority opinion in the case which establishes the scope of authority for the President and Congress said:
It results that the investment of the federal government with the powers of external sovereignty did not depend upon the affirmative grants of the Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution, would have vested in the federal government as necessary concomitants of nationality. Neither the Constitution nor the laws passed in pursuance of it have any force in foreign territory unless in respect of our own citizens ( see American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S. 347, 356), and operations of the nation in such territory must be governed by treaties, international understandings and compacts, and the principles of international law. As a member of the family of nations, the right and power of the United States in that field are equal to the right and power of the other members of the international family. Otherwise, the United States is not completely sovereign. The power to acquire territory by discovery and occupation ( Jones v. United States, 137 U.S. 202, 212), the power to expel undesirable aliens ( Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U.S. 698, 705 et seq. ), the power to make such international agreements as do not constitute treaties in the constitutional sense ( Altman & Co. v. United States, 224 U.S. 583, 600-601; Crandall, Treaties, Their Making and Enforcement,2d ed., p. 102 and note 1), none of which is expressly affirmed by the Constitution, nevertheless exist as inherently inseparable from the conception of nationality. This the court recognized, and, in each of the cases cited, found the warrant for its conclusions not in the provisions of the Constitution, but in the law of nations.
In Burnet v. Brooks, 288 U.S. 378, 396, we said,
As a nation with all the attributes of sovereignty, the United States is vested with all the powers of government necessary to maintain an effective control of international relations.
Cf. Carter v. Carter Coal Co., supra, p. 295. [p319]
Not only, as we have shown, is the federal power over external affairs in origin and essential character different from that over internal affairs, but participation in the exercise of the power is significantly limited. In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the President alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it. As Marshall said in his great argument of March 7, 1800, in the House of Representatives, “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” Annals, 6th Cong., col. 613. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, at a very early day in our history (February 15, 1816), reported to the Senate, among other things, as follows:
The President is the constitutional representative of the United States with regard to foreign nations. He manages our concerns with foreign nations, and must necessarily be most competent to determine when, how, and upon what subjects negotiation may be urged with the greatest prospect of success. For his conduct, he is responsible to the Constitution. The committee consider this responsibility the surest pledge for the faithful discharge of his duty. They think the interference of the Senate in the direction of foreign negotiations calculated to diminish that responsibility, and thereby to impair the best security for the national safety. The nature of transactions with foreign nations, moreover, requires caution and unity of design, and their success frequently depends on secrecy and dispatch.
U.S. Senate, Reports, Committee on Foreign Relations, vol. 8, p 24.
It is important to bear in mind that we are here dealing not alone with an authority vested in the President by an [p320] exertion of legislative power, but with such an authority plus the very delicate, plenary and exclusive power of the President as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations – a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress but which, of course, like every other governmental power, must be exercised in subordination to the applicable provisions of the Constitution. It is quite apparent that if, in the maintenance of our international relations, embarrassment – perhaps serious embarrassment – is to be avoided and success for our aims achieved, congressional legislation which is to be made effective through negotiation and inquiry within the international field must often accord to the President a degree of discretion and freedom from statutory restriction which would not be admissible were domestic affairs alone involved. Moreover, he, not Congress, has the better opportunity of knowing the conditions which prevail in foreign countries, and especially is this true in time of war. He has his confidential sources of information. He has his agents in the form of diplomatic, consular and other officials. Secrecy in respect of information gathered by them may be highly necessary, and the premature disclosure of it productive of harmful results. Indeed, so clearly is this true that the first President refused to accede to a request to lay before the House of Representatives the instructions, correspondence and documents relating to the negotiation of the Jay Treaty – a refusal the wisdom of which was recognized by the House itself, and has never since been doubted. In his reply to the request, President Washington said:
The nature of foreign negotiations requires caution, and their success must often depend on secrecy, and even when brought to a conclusion, a full disclosure of all the measures, demands, or eventual concessions which may have been proposed or contemplated would be extremely impolitic, for this might have a pernicious influence on future negotiations or produce immediate inconveniences, perhaps danger and mischief, in relation to other powers. The necessity of such caution and secrecy was one cogent reason for vesting the power of making treaties in the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, the principle on which that body was formed confining it to a small number of members. To admit, then, a right in the House of Representatives to demand and to have as a matter of course all the papers respecting a negotiation with a foreign power would be to establish a dangerous precedent.