Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler has not yet filed an opinion to support her ruling Friday that there are no valid legal grounds for legislative Republicans to impeach Democratic Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.
But her brief order, finding that a House committee had failed to demonstrate that Krasner had engaged in any “misbehavior in office” that is necessary to trigger an impeachment, spoke volumes on its own about constitutional separation of powers and the orderly conduct of government.
Ceisler did not specifically preclude the Senate from carrying out its scheduled impeachment trial later this month, but it should have that effect. The seven articles of impeachment filed in December by the House Republican majority do not show that he had failed to perform his duties with an improper or corrupt motive, the judge said.
That reflects the underlying truth — the impeachment attempt is purely political. It is based in policy disagreements between the progressive Krasner and legislative conservatives. The people of Philadelphia twice have weighed in on Krasner’s policy preferences and his performance, overwhelmingly electing him in 2017 and re-electing with 77% of the vote in November 2021.
Ceisler rejected two of Krasner’s arguments against impeachment. He had argued that the Legislature has no authority to impeach him because he is a local official, and that the Legislature may not authorize an impeachment in one session of the Legislature and then carry it out in a succeeding session without starting the process anew.
The judge rejected both arguments while finding in favor of Krasner’s argument in his specific case. That is exactly correct: The ruling preserves the right of the Legislature to impeach officials such as district attorneys, judges or others for actual wrongdoing, while rejecting the use of impeachment as a mere political instrument.
Senators should embrace the judge’s ruling and cancel the trial. If they insist on this political misuse of power, Krasner should use Ceisler’s opinion as the means to obtain a definitive rejection of the impeachment from the state Supreme Court.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS
