OPINION:
The anti-Trump crowd is claiming that President Trump has, like Richard Nixon, committed an impeachable offense. Thus pressure is being applied to force his resignation.
President Nixon resigned because there was incontrovertible proof that he had committed a crime. In contrast, the supposed smoking-gun evidence against Mr. Trump consists of memoranda that former FBI Director James Comey claimed he wrote right after conversations with Mr. Trump. On their own they are nothing more than self-serving written statements. They are not hard evidence.
Given Mr. Comey’s reprehensible conduct of the Clinton investigation, his failure to disclose the memos prior to his termination calls into question his integrity, honesty and credibility even more so than before.
It has also been posited that Mr. Trump’s very act of terminating Mr. Comey is indicative of guilt and merits impeachment. Again, non-existent parallels to Watergate have been drawn. In the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre,” both the attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest of Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor. That particular appointment was under the independent authority of the attorney general. Hence Nixon did not have the authority to direct the firing, which was done by a hastily appointed stand-in, and which a federal judge later ruled to have been illegal. However, no articles of impeachment were passed until the next year, when Nixon’s crime of obstruction of justice was laid bare.
Mr. Trump had direct authority to terminate Mr. Comey, and it was an action that those who are now castigating Mr. Trump for undertaking had previously demanded.
In the Watergate case, another special prosecutor was appointed. Another FBI director will be appointed who could have continued the long-running, heretofore-fruitless investigation. A special counsel has been appointed to pick it up.
Nixon resigned because of crime committed. Mr. Trump is being pressured to resign because of crime alleged. He must not do so. Removal by impeachment or resignation must be based on fact, not supposition or personal or political differences.
HESSIE L. HARRIS
Silver Spring
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