Everyone knows about that big impeachment thing going on in Washington, D.C., but there’s another presidential impeachment looming at … the University of Florida?
“The student body president of the University of Florida is facing impeachment calls for alleged misuse of funds to bring Donald Trump Jr. and presidential campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus last month, according to reports,” the New York Post reports.
The student president, Michael C. Murphy, was served with a formal impeachment resolution on Tuesday, signed by more than 100 students and alumni. The resolution says that in this year’s fall session, Murphy “colluded with Trump Victory National Financial Consultant Caroline Wren to expend $50,000 of mandatory student fees to further enrich Donald Trump, Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle through the ACCENT Speakers Bureau.”
“By using student fees to advance his own expressed political beliefs at the expense of the … Student Government writ large, Mr. Murphy not only endangered students marginalized by the speakers’ white nationalist supporters, but also abused his power to advance a particular political party at the expense of the students he should represent,” the impeachment resolution states.
President Trump’s oldest son and girlfriend Guilfoyle visited the Gainesville campus on October 10.
“Questions have been raised about the legality of the visit, as Murphy agreed to pay the pair $50,000 in publicly funded student activity fees and the law says public funds cannot be used to support political campaigns,” the Tampa Bay Times wrote.
“[A]n email surfaced, as first reported by UF’s independent student newspaper, The Alligator, showing Murphy worked to set up the event with Caroline Wren, national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a fundraising committee for the president’s campaign,” the paper wrote.
Wren declined to be interviewed for this story, instead releasing a statement that she met Murphy for the first time in the summer, “when he expressed interest in bringing Donald Trump Jr. to campus.”
“I followed up with him via my private email in my personal capacity and mistakenly forgot to remove my Trump Victory signature,” she wrote. “After an initial call to discuss a potential visit, University of Florida representatives were connected to Donald Trump Jr’s office.”
Murphy, though, told the student newspaper that because the visit by Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle was not an official campaign stop, it did not violate university rules.
Henry Fair, head of the ACCENT Speakers Bureau, an arm of the student government, also told The Washington Post last month that “this event is a campus speaking engagement, not a campaign event.”
But the Times quoted one student body senator saying the event was political.
“Public records show that Michael Murphy colluded with a member of the Donald Trump campaign,” student senator Ben Lima said during a student government meeting last week. Lima is leading the impeachment charge.
“If this was not a campaign event, then why was the student body president in communication with the Trump campaign to bring these speakers to campus?” he asked.
Student senators will soon vote on his impeachment. “If at least two-thirds of the group votes in favor,” The Times wrote, “Murphy will be immediately suspended. Then the other half of the senate will take a final vote on whether to permanently remove him from office.”