Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment
I.Introduction
Our President holds the ultimate public trust. He is vested with powers so great that they frightened the Framers of our Constitution; in exchange, he swears an oath to faithfully execute the laws that hold those powers in check. This oath is no formality. The Framers foresaw that a faithless President could destroy their experiment in democracy. As George Mason warned at the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787, "if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end." [1] Mason evoked a well-known historical truth: when corrupt motives take root, they drive an endless thirst for power and contempt for checks and balances. It is then only the smallest of steps toward acts of oppression and assaults on free and fair elections. A President faithful only to himself—who will sell out democracy and national security for his own personal advantage— is a danger to every American. Indeed, he threatens America itself.
Impeachment is the Constitution's final answer to a President who mistakes himself for a monarch. Aware that power corrupts, our Framers built other guardrails against that error. The Constitution thus separates governmental powers, imposes an oath of faithful execution, prohibits profiting from office, and guarantees accountability through regular elections. But the Framers were not naïve. They knew, and feared, that someday a corrupt executive might claim he could do anything he wanted as President. Determined to protect our democracy, the Framers built a safety valve into the Constitution: A President can be removed from office if the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment charging him with "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," and if two-thirds of the Senate votes to find the President guilty of such misconduct after a trial.[2]
As Justice Joseph Story recognized, "the power of impeachment is not one expected in any government to be in constant or frequent exercise."[3] When faced with credible evidence of extraordinary wrongdoing, however, it is incumbent on the House to investigate and determine whether impeachment is warranted. On October 31, 2019, the House approved H. Res. 660, which, among other things, confirmed the preexisting inquiry "into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America."[4]
The Judiciary Committee now faces questions of extraordinary importance. In prior impeachment inquiries addressing allegations of Presidential misconduct, the staff of the Judiciary
- ↑ 1 Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 392 (1911) (hereinafter, "Records of the Federal Convention").
- ↑ U.S. Const. art. II, § 4; id. art. I, § 5, cl. 5; id. art. I, § 3, cl. 6.
- ↑ 2 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 221 (1833).
- ↑ H.Res. 660, 116th Cong. (2019).
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