Senators find loophole to stop presidential impeachment. But not that president.
The University of Florida’s student government found itself in the national spotlight over the last few weeks as its members looked to impeach their president, Michael Murphy, due to his role in bringing Donald Trump Jr. to the campus to speak for $50,000.
An impeachment resolution was filed. A UF student senator wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times against Murphy. Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Trump Jr. and the Florida GOP have all weighed in to defend him and condemn UF.
But this show has already halted.
The UF Student Senate Judiciary Committee decided Thursday that the impeachment resolution was illegitimate, effectively stopping the impeachment process before it could reach a hearing, reported The Independent Florida Alligator.
The impeachment resolution was filed because university rules say student funds are not to be used for campaign events. UF spokesman Steve Orlando told The Gainesville Sun that the speech was not a campaign event.
But emails between Murphy and Caroline Wren, a consultant for the president’s 2020 reelection committee, showed them working together to bring Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, a TV news personality, to the university in early October.
Murphy took on a lawyer, Daniel E. Nordby of Shutts & Bowen LLP, after the impeachment resolution and national backlash. Nordby told the Alligator, “Michael Murphy did not violate federal election law, state law, or any university policies. Rather, this situation is reflective of students on college campuses across America that are intolerant of conservative views.”
The resolution, filed Nov. 12, was signed by 107 students, alumni, members of student government.
Now the committee’s authority to review the resolution has sparked debate over the interpretation of two conflicting sets of rules, student body law and the student government’s constitution.
As the judiciary committee chose the wording of student body law, Senate President Emily Dunson can call a hearing by an impeachment body consisting of certain student senators. If she doesn’t, senators can move the resolution to the student government supreme court, which is composed of law students appointed by the student body president.
“A lot of them have been appointed by the majority party, so they haven’t exactly been fair to the minority party in the past,” said Minority President Ben Lima, a co-signer of the resolution. “We don’t have the most confidence in them.”
Dunson and Murphy were pictured together at President Trump’s inauguration ball in Washington, D.C.
The wording the committee and Dunson followed, Student Body Law 306.3 reads, “The Student Senate, in its rules and procedures, may designate a committee to review the resolution.” Dunson sent the resolution to the judiciary committee.
There is a legal gray area in the student body law as it doesn’t specifically say if a committee can call a resolution illegitimate or what happens when it does. This vagueness is where the debate lives.
Lima believes the judiciary committee’s reading is wrong. He says the constitution, which outlines a different process for impeachment, takes precedence over laws.
According to the constitution, the impeachment process should have started with the resolution going to the impeachment body for a hearing. The constitution makes no reference to a committee being able to intercept the resolution before it gets to the impeachment body.
The student government adviser, James Tyger, weighed in on the issue in an email to Lima that said the committee had followed student body law correctly and that the overall process played out just like it would on the federal level in Washington.
If the resolution gets to the student supreme court and doesn’t deliver the verdict Lima is looking for, Lima said he and the other people who signed the resolution will go to the UF administration, which has already said where it stands on the issue — that the speech was not a campaign event.
UF President Kent Fuchs told POLITICO that UF attorneys told him the Trump Jr. event was legal before it happened.
With the judiciary committee, senate president and student government adviser agreeing that the committee has the authority to review the impeachment resolution, Lima said he suspects collusion.
“I think this points to some sort of collusion between the student government adviser, the majority party and administration,” Lima said. “They are all saying Murphy did nothing wrong and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they are all saying the same thing. They are trying to sweep this under the rug so national outlets won’t keep reporting on this.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2019 at 6:30 AM.
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