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On Wednesday, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee began its public hearings in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump with testimony from four constitutional law experts. The three witnesses called by House Democrats—Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School, and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina School of Law—were unanimous in their finding: The president has committed impeachable offenses, and the only proper response under the U.S. Constitution is for the House of Representatives to exercise their impeachment power.
In discussing the importance of this unique power, they didn't need to dig any further into the Constitution than the first three words of the preamble: "We the people." The framers of the Constitution, after fighting for independence from a king, founded a new government in which the election of a president by the people is central. They included the impeachment clause specifically for cases just like this one, where a politician tries to corrupt the election process—because as Karlan noted, if you don't have election by the people, this strikes at the heart of democracy itself. In Feldman's opening statement, he quoted William Richardson Davie of North Carolina: "If the president could not be impeached, Davie said, 'he will spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected.' Impeachment was therefore 'an essential security for the good behaviour of the Executive.'" As Feldman stated, "If we cannot impeach a president who abuses his office for personal advantage, we no longer live in a democracy." According to the House Republicans' witness, Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School, the evidence against the president is not concrete enough to support articles of impeachment; in order to draw complete inferences, the committee should hear from more direct witnesses. But of course, President Trump has forbidden anyone with direct knowledge from participating and has himself refused to cooperate in any way. This obstruction may lead to an additional article of impeachment. The stakes could not be higher. To leave it on the words of Gerhardt: "The president's serious misconduct, including bribery; soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader in exchange for his exercise of power; and obstructing justice and Congress are worse than the misconduct of any prior president, including what previous presidents who faced impeachment have done or been accused of doing." Read CAP's coverage of the December 4 hearing ? | ||||||||
What we're reading | ||||||||
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Vox How Trump and Republicans are obstructing the impeachment process Washington Post 5 takeaways from the Judiciary Committee's first impeachment hearing Politico Nunes' role exposed and 8 more takeaways from the Intel report | ||||||||
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