Under our Constitution, impeachment and removal from office is not a criminal proceeding. It is a fiduciary accounting for abuse of office. In Joe Biden’s case it would be for abuse of the office of President. His fault would be having been unfaithful to his trust as President.

To assume his office, Biden promised the American people that he would “faithfully execute the office of President.”

This rule of faithful best efforts on the part of every President was applied in the article of impeachment of Richard Nixon as follows:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

(This language was adopted by Special Counsel John Doar in part to follow my research into the history of impeachments when a student at Harvard Law School in 1974, research which was later published in the Georgetown Law Journal: “Public Office as a Public Trust: a suggestion that a fiduciary standard is implied in Impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Georgetown Law Journal, 1975)

Our constitutional standard for what is right and what is wrong when holding an office of public trust was set in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 34:

Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them… Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

Fiduciary law holds that when a President is accused of self-dealing to serve himself and not the American people, such a President must attempt to prove himself innocent by making full disclosure of all the relevant facts to the Congress.

In an impeachment inquiry, there is no presumption of innocence to protect the defendant. Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. A president under impeachment has no due process privileges such as the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Quite the contrary, where self-dealing is alleged, the accused has the obligation to come forward with evidence proving innocence. If he or she cannot do so, they deserve impeachment and removal from office.

(This rule of law as to proving one’s innocence when accused of self-dealing applies to all private trustees as well.)

Further, a president under impeachment may not invoke the familiar privilege of keeping his communications secret from public knowledge. If he refuses to disclose what he said or wrote in private, he will not meet the demands placed on him to prove his innocence. And so he may be impeached by the House of Representatives acting as a grand jury and then convicted by the Senate acting as a jury deciding on the facts. In such a case, silence alone provides sufficient grounds for holding the accused guilty of self-dealing as charged.

In Joe Biden’s case, his self-serving behavior contrary to his oath of office and the duties placed upon him by his presidential public trusteeship include: 1) failure to come forward with the facts as to his and his family’s financial gains when he served as Vice-President of the United States, which personal avarice compromised the national security of the United States; 2) participation in a conspiracy to have the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the IRS withhold from the American people facts regarding his family’s corrupting financial transactions; 3) authorizing use of the prosecutorial authority of the United States to harass and oppress his political rival Donald J. Trump; 4) authorizing and condoning government suppression of free speech in furtherance of his own political interests  contrary to the First Amendment to the Constitution

In these ways did Joseph R. Biden personally profit from the use of his official authority contrary to his duties as President.

Given the facts already disclosed in the media, the burden to prove that he is innocent of these charges has now shifted to Joe Biden personally. Should he not provide evidence in his own defense, he should be impeached forthwith.  That is the law.

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