Materiality and the Case for Impeachment
Materiality is a key concept in disciplines of Accounting or Law. In Accounting, if credits amount to US$1,000,400 and debits amount to US$1,000,000, relative to US$1,000,000, the discrepancy of US$400.00 is immaterial, with outcome the US$400.00 can be classified as a discrepancy. In presence of immateriality of the US$400.00, the books are assumed balanced, and a book entry that reclassifies US$400.00 from the credit ledger to a discrepancy account cleans things up.
When it comes to the accounting books for the entire country, unless drug dealers in the great ole USA do not spend any of their incomes in the country, all of the monies they spend, which naturally they are unable to disclose on tax returns, is accounted for as a discrepancy.
Consider then discipline of Law. In Law, relative to, “I killed him”, the declaration, “I thought of killing him” lacks materiality. If a prosecutor builds a murder case in entirety on “I thought of killing him” he or she is bound to lose the case.
In Law, “I thought of killing him” or “I considered killing him”, fails the test of materiality.
So then the case for impeachment of Donald Trump. The Consensus? Donald Trump attempted to do things a President ought not to do, but the checks and balances in the system worked, with outcome he did not in actuality achieve anything that was illegal.
A wise counsel for the President — which he can afford — would argue that Trump, being an outsider to the political establishment, and not being intellectually inclined in so far as any desire for arrival at an understanding of limits of his powers are concerned, reasonably could have attempted the sorts of outcomes of which he is accused. The wise counsel would go on to argue that it was up to the system to work as expected, to prevent any abuses that were intentioned by the President.
In closing, the wise counsel would emphasize that the system having worked as expected, that his client only can be accused of lack of interest in arrival at an understanding of…
