political benefits at the direct expense of our security and self-governance.
This conduct, and the risk posed by President Trump's pattern of misconduct, is the very definition of an impeachable offense. It captures the Framers' worst fears about how Presidents might someday abuse the powers of their office. To protect democracy and safeguard national security, the Committee on the Judiciary has no choice but to recommend that President Trump be impeached.
III.President Trump Committed "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" by Abusing the Powers of his Office
"[A]buse of power was no vague notion to the Framers and their contemporaries. It had a very particular meaning to them."[1] This meaning encompassed the use of official powers in a way that "on its very face grossly exceeds the President's constitutional authority or violates legal limits on that authority."[2] As relevant here, it also included "the exercise of official power to obtain an improper personal benefit, while ignoring or injuring the national interest."[3] This understanding is rooted in the Constitution's Take Care Clause, which commands the President to "faithfully execute" the law.[4] That duty requires Presidents "to exercise their power only when it is motivated in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest."[5]
Numerous Framers confirmed that a President can be impeached for exercising power with a corrupt purpose. As James Iredell explained, "the president would be liable to impeachments [if] he had … acted from some corrupt motive or other," or if he was "willfully abusing his trust."[6] Alexander Hamilton deemed impeachment proper for "offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."[7] In a similar vein, James Madison reasoned that the President could be impeached if there were "grounds to believe" he used his pardon power for the corrupt purpose of obstructing justice by "shelter[ing]" persons with whom he is connected "in any suspicious manner."[8] As these and many other historical authorities show, "to the Framers, it was dangerous for officials to exceed their constitutional power, or to transgress legal limits, but it was equally dangerous (perhaps more so) for officials to conceal corrupt or illegitimate objectives
- ↑ See Staff of H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 116th Cong., Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment 18 (Comm. Print 2019) (hereinafter "Constitutional Grounds for Impeachment (2019)").
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Id. at 8.
- ↑ U.S. Const., art. II, § 3, cl. 5.
- ↑ Andrew Kent et al., Faithful Execution and Article II, 132 Harv. L. Rev. 2111, 2120, 2179 (2019).
- ↑ Background and History of Impeachment: Hearing Before the Subcomm. On the Constitution of the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 105th Cong. 49 (1999) (statement of Michael J. Gerhardt).
- ↑ The Federalist No. 65, at 426 (Alexander Hamilton) (Benjamin Fletcher Wright ed., 2004).
- ↑ 3 Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 497-98 (1861) (hereinafter "Debates in the Several State Conventions").
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