Law Professor Turned Congresswoman Supports Impeachment Inquiry Against Trump (Katie Porter-D-CA)

This article first appeared in New English Review.

Katie Porter (D-CA) represents California’s 45th District in Congress She is my representative since I live in her district. Prior to becoming a congresswoman in the 2018 midterm elections, she was a law professor at UC Irvine Law School, which under its previous dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, was little more than a training ground for liberal activists, so much so that they had a chapter of the National Lawyers Guild affiliated with their school. (The NLG was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA.) More recently, the UCI NLG affiliate has acted as “legal observers” for the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at UCI when it disrupts Jewish, pro-Israel events on campus as occurred in May 2016 and May 2017. In the latter instance, I was a personal witness.

Porter’s specialty in law is bankruptcy.

In addition, Porter was one of several Orange County Democrats who ousted Republican incumbents in close elections. In Porter’s case, she was declared the winner several days after the polls closed and after all the “harvested votes” were counted, which pulled her ahead of Mimi Walters. There have been several allegations made about the nature of those harvested votes, but since I have no substantiation, I will leave it there.

This week, Porter has announced that she will support an impeachment inquiry against President Trump based on Robert Mueller’s report on his two-year investigation. Porter takes the position that there are instances where Trump committed obstruction of justice, but that Mueller would not or could not bring charges against a sitting president. Here is her announcement video on Twitter:

First of all, we have conflicting statements as to whether Mueller declined to charge Trump on obstruction because he is a sitting president. Mueller himself has not helped clear up the confusion.

More importantly, however, Mueller’s two-year-investigation ended with no charges and no findings. According to Mueller’s report, there was no evidence of collusion (the underlying allegation) and no conclusion as to the question of obstruction.

Attorney General William Barr is taking heat from Democrats because he accepted the report and made the final official call. No charges. When an investigating agency (in this case, Mueller’s team) brings the DOJ (attorney general) such a report, there is only one proper conclusion: Prosecution declined. No ethical prosecutor in the United States of America decides to go forward with prosecution after receiving such a report. I know this from my own career in federal law enforcement (DEA). If you want a prosecutor to accept a case for prosecution, you bring a case with enough evidence to convict in court. Mueller did not.

As a lawyer (albeit a civil lawyer), and as a law school professor, Porter should know this. But then again, she comes to us from a liberal, activist law school (UC Irvine). So after a two-year investigation by the special counsel, Porter’s conclusion, like so many other Democrats, is that impeachment is warranted. That is further evidence to me that this entire impeachment question is political. All of Porter’s words about justice, the Constitution, and doing what is right as opposed to what is politicaly expedient are absurd. Her base onviously wants her to support impeachment, so she supports impeachment.

If Porter really thinks there is a sound legal basis for  impeaching Trump, she needs to go back to law school. And I don’t mean as a professor.