{"id":2454002,"date":"2020-02-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-01T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=320204"},"modified":"2020-02-02T09:31:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-02T16:31:59","slug":"impeachment-trial-no-crime-no-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/impeachment-trial-no-crime-no-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"Impeachment trial: No crime, no punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/02\/facebook-thumbnail-1200.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I responded to a juvenile letter in the Aspen Daily News signed by several busybody local officials who can\u2019t do their elected jobs competently but are self-appointed experts on Senate impeachment trials. I pointed out that the articles of impeachment against President Trump do not allege the elements of any crime, high or low.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Two locals commented on my letter online challenging its legal analysis. Yet they offered none of their own. Probably because they don\u2019t understand the law. So I will explain it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">A crime consists of a series of acts and a state of mind specified in a criminal statute. Each act is called an \u201celement.\u201d If one or more element is absent, there is no crime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">House managers allege the president had a corrupt state of mind when he thought about failing to \u201ccommit\u201d Ukrainian aid by the Sept. 30 deadline. Maybe. But he committed the aid by the legal deadline. There was no legal requirement to \u201ccommit\u201d the aid earlier. Thus a necessary \u201celement\u201d in any alleged crime, violating the appropriation statutes, is absent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Name\">Maurice Emmer<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND Letter Title\">Aspen<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/impeachment-trial-no-crime-no-punishment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I responded to a juvenile letter in the Aspen Daily News signed by several busybody local officials who can\u2019t do their elected jobs competently but are self-appointed experts on Senate impeachment trials. I pointed out that the articles of impeachment against President Trump do not allege the elements of any crime, high or low. Two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 18:04:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2454026,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454002\/revisions\/2454026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}