Impeachment, 25th Amendment, Or Fire The Help
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution
11 min read
The article repeatedly references the 25th Amendment as a mechanism for presidential removal due to incapacity. Understanding its history, provisions, and the few times it has been invoked would provide crucial context for evaluating the author's arguments about Trump's fitness for office.
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Impeachment in the United States
12 min read
The article discusses impeachable offenses and the Democratic Party's reluctance to pursue impeachment. Understanding the constitutional framework, historical precedents, and what constitutes 'high crimes and misdemeanors' would help readers assess the author's claims about impeachable conduct.
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White House Chief of Staff
8 min read
Susie Wiles's role as Chief of Staff is central to this article, particularly her function as a 'failsafe' managing a president who allegedly doesn't understand his own agencies. The history and evolution of this powerful but unelected position would illuminate the unusual dynamics described.
Read Chris Whipple’s new Vanity Fair profile of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and by the end you’ll have found cause to (simultaneously) impeach Donald Trump, remove him under the terms of the 25th amendment, and run Wiles, JD Vance, plus several cabinet members out of federal office and into federal prison.
Don’t have the time or a subscription to Vanity Fair? Fear not, I’ve done the work for you.
Below you’ll find the most damning revelations, interspersed with my own comments. They are ordered as they appear in the story. The article bounces back and forth in time, so these aren’t strictly chronological, but they do trace the arc of the second Trump presidency pretty neatly.
As you read, bear in mind that the Democratic Party leadership holds the view that House Democrats should not support privileged resolutions of impeachment.
PARDON WHOM?
On Trump’s first day in office… Trump issued pardons to almost everyone convicted in the bloody January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, in which nine people ultimately died and 150 were injured. Even rioters who’d beaten cops within an inch of their lives were set free. (Fourteen people convicted of seditious conspiracy had their sentences commuted.)
Did she ever ask the president, “ ‘Wait a minute, do you really want to pardon all 1,500 January 6 convicts, or should we be more selective?’ ”
“I did exactly that,” Wiles replied. “I said, ‘I am on board with the people that were happenstancers or didn’t do anything violent. And we certainly know what everybody did because the FBI has done such an incredible job.’ ” (Trump has said his FBI investigators were “corrupt” and part of a “deep state.”) But Trump argued that even the violent offenders had been unfairly treated. Wiles explained: “In every case, of the ones he was looking at, in every case, they had already served more time than the sentencing guidelines would have suggested. So given that, I sort of got on board.” (According to court records, many of the January 6 rioters pardoned by Trump had received sentences that were lighter than the guidelines.)
As Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, Whipple’s final corrective here significantly understates the truth, and thus provides Wiles with a false alibi. Basically nobody who tried to overthrow the government was sentenced to serve more time than the guidelines recommended. Her
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