Could Peña Nieto Be Impeached for Inviting Trump to Mexico?

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is in hot water over Donald Trump's visit to the country. Apart from the fact that hosting Trump was widely seen as a colossal error that humiliated the president and the nation, a report by Proceso magazine suggests that Peña Nieto could be impeached over his “treasonous” act.

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"Anyone can file a complaint with the Congress for treason against the homeland, so that legislators determine in an impeachment process if the Chief Executive committed this crime,” constitutional expert Elisur Arteaga told Proceso.

Peña Nieto argued that he invited Trump to Mexico to confront him face-to-face about his racist comments toward Mexicans and to challenge him about his proposal that Mexico pay for a wall along their shared border. However, media reports indicated that Trump's visit was organized in order to assuage concerns in international markets over what a Trump victory might mean for the Mexican economy.

Either way, the visit was widely panned. Peña Nieto was criticized by some quarters for coming off as weak and feeble, whereas Trump came off looking presidential in his joint press conference from the presidential residence in Mexico City.

The Mexican president also failed to publicly confront Trump over his border wall proposal, adopting a stronger line only after his departure, when the mistake of having invited Trump becamse evident.

In a local television interview that same evening, Peña Nieto repeatedly insisted that Trump represented a “risk and threat” to Mexico. He repeated that view in a town-hall event with youth the following day.

It is precisely Peña Nieto's own assessment that Trump is a threat to the nation that could see him impeached for treason.

“If the president is inviting to Mexico someone who is considered an enemy of Mexico, he is flirting with the crime of treason,” said Arteaga.

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Edmundo Salas Garza, a former director at the state-run Center for Research and National Security, told Proceso that Trump's opinions toward Mexico go beyond mere insults and do indeed constitute a threat to the Mexican state. However, he argued that the division of powers in the U.S. would keep Trump in check should he occupy the White House.

In effect, the argument goes that the Mexican president willingly invited someone he himself considers a threat to the national security of Mexico to the country in an exercise that only served to raise Trump's profile and did nothing to address the alleged risk he poses to the nation.

Another national security expert, Erubiel Tirado Cervantes, told the magazine that the president was unwise to flippantly talk about Trump's alleged risk in order to try to save face.

“The responses indicate that the character, today, is a threat to the bilateral relationship with the United States and it is not clear that he is a threat to national security,” said Cervantes.

Arteaga, who teaches constitutional law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Proceso that he believes there is reason to believe that “Peña Nieto and those who participated in the decision to invite Trump committed the crime of treason.”