Letters to the Editor: Make Republicans defend Trump during impeachment hearings

To the editor: Despite the L.A. Times Editorial Board’s recognition that a “powerful case can be made that President Trump’s egregious actions in office ... justify a vote by the House of Representatives on whether he has committed ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ and should be impeached,” it accepts the Trumpian argument that a “Senate trial in an election year could serve as a campaign commercial for him.” It’s just the opposite.

At this stage in the Richard Nixon impeachment process, the Senate Democrats did not have the necessary two-thirds votes to convict him. Nevertheless, the House Democrats courageously fulfilled their constitutional duty to hold public hearings and display the evidence of Nixon’s pernicious abuses of power.

Nixon was forced to resign.

Today, the Democrats have the same constitutional duty. If in the face of overwhelming evidence of Trump’s obstruction of justice, corruption and conflicts of interest, Senate Republicans refuse to convict, then the Democrats will tell the American people that their only chance to save democracy is to defeat Trump and elect a Democratic House and Senate.

James Madison said that impeachment was “indispensable” to remove a president who “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression”or “might betray his trust to foreign powers.”

Stephen F. Rohde, Los Angeles

The writer is a constitutional lawyer.

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To the editor: The Democrats are handling this brilliantly. Just wake me when Trump is impeached and Mike Pence is president.

William David Stone, Beverly Hills