Reading over the Articles of Impeachment as released today, I am struck by the way the Democrats structured them. It seems to me that they made a mistake by allowing it to contain a negative pregnant.
A Negative pregnant is not the result Trump hopes for from a test taken by one of his bimbos. No, it is a term often used in legal pleadings. It means that the charges are written in a way that allow a person to too easily deny the charge. For example, suppose a Complaint says “John hit me with his red car.” The person charged can deny that, not because he didn’t hit the guy, but because the car was blue. The first Article of Impeachment is written the same way. Here’s how.
The Democrats wrote the Article to include both the allegations that Trump improperly enlisted a foreign government to interfere in our election by asking for the Biden’s to be investigated, and that he pressured that government to do this by withholding military aid and an Oval Office visit. Those are two separate charges and they should have been pled that way. Putting them together creates a negative pregnant.
I have bored anyone who will listen to me with my theory that it is wrong for Democrats to insist on having to prove that Trump refused the aid and the visit for the same political reasons that he asked for the investigation of the Bidens. They don’t have to do that. The request for the Biden investigation is impeachable enough and it’s proof is self-evident. As Trump says, “Read the Transcript.” The proof of Trump’s motivation for withholding what Ukraine wanted is less clear. It requires probing Trump’s mind. A proctologist’s probe would be less painful than that.
While, of course, the Republicans would vote against the Articles even if they had come down from Mt. Sinai, now, the way this Impeachment Article is written, it makes the Republicans task easier. If there were a separate charge for just the Biden investigation demand, that would be much harder to justify. Now, they can vote against the whole thing – negative pregnant style – by saying that they question the military aid/Oval Office part.
So, even though a negative pregnant typically has nothing to do with conception, this one can be said to be somewhat related. It is another way that we are getting fucked.
We were right 