Judging from the article “Lawyers: Dems just want to overturn election,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone — with his complaints of “interference in an election” and of “tearing up ballots” — either does not understand the reason why Article II, Section 4 was included in the U.S. Constitution, or (more likely) is deliberately trying to confuse the issue to score political points.
Of course, by their very nature, the impeachment and subsequent conviction of a president result in the removal from office of an elected official, but overturning the result of an election, per se, is not their raison d’etre. Rather, their purpose is to provide a lawful remedy for a situation in which someone who has won an election subsequently engages in actions that are beyond the pale.
Instead of attempting to divert the public’s attention to something that is quite beside the point, the president’s defense team needs to concentrate their efforts on refuting, if they can, the truth and the substance of the charges against him.
Cipollone’s line of argument in the article is akin to claiming that the real reason a lifeguard clears the beach after sighting a shark is in order to thwart people’s choice to have a swim.
Christopher Stone, Ogden
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