Conflict of Interest

When an elected representative stands to gain anything personal as a result of their vote, the ethical thing for that person to do is to recuse themselves from voting on that issue. Anything, of course means such things as money, a better position, more power, and similar.

As it becomes obvious the Democrats are going to impeach Donald Trump in the House of Representatives and send the articles to the Senate for trial, it also becomes obvious there are some that stand to personally gain from this.

These are the people currently serving in the US Senate that are running for President. Currently, they are Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet and Bernie Sanders.

Sitting in judgement of the person whose job they want and are actively campaigning for is clearly a conflict of interest; by removing the biggest obstacle to their ascending to the Presidency, they clearly stand to personally gain. Trump is a formidable opponent to face in an election, and voting to tarnish him while simultaneously running against him is unethical. And we all know how these people want to show how ethical they are. (cough, cough...)

Considering this, these people should do the honorable thing and recuse themselves from sitting in on the trial and voting afterwards. Honest and ethical people would see this obvious conflict and step aside.

Of course, we are not talking about honorable and ethical people when we talk about jackals like Booker, Warren, Bennet, Klobuchar and Sanders.

Looking at things from the top down, let's add Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris to the list of conflicted also. While they have officially dropped out of the race, the fact that they even entered the race and stayed as long as they did jaundices their ability to look at the facts fairly and render an unbiased judgement. They've clearly heard Hail to the Chief played too many times and thought it was for them.

Also, we ought to have a short list of Democrat Vice-Presidential candidates currently sitting in the Senate, because they also stand to personally gain by voting on this.

Any US Senator that votes in the impeachment trial should remove themselves from consideration in the 2020 Presidential/Vice Presidential election.

That is, if they really, really want to show us how ethical they are.

Don't hold your breath on these people recusing themselves. Why, it's their duty, of course.

Which, of course, makes us wonder why all the missed votes on other things wasn't also their duty to vote on.

Oh, of course! They were too busy running for President!