Lawfare's Wittes, Hennessey & Jurecic: So You Want to Impeach the President

[highplainsdem]

https://www.lawfareblog.com/so-you-want-impeach-president

The Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives suddenly seems to be careening toward impeachment. The resistance to this measure, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, appears to be crumbling in the face of the new scandal over President Trump’s bullying of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to produce damaging information on Joe Biden and his son. Whether the newfound momentum will sustain itself over the coming days is anyone’s guess. But the sudden and urgent focus on impeachment raises an important question: What should the House impeach President Trump for? If the House is no longer considering whether to impeach Trump and has really decided to move forward, it needs to think about what articles of impeachment should—and should not—contain.

This is actually a difficult question. Trump’s misconduct presents what the military calls a target-rich environment. There’s a huge range of activity that a reasonable member of Congress could in good conscience regard as impeachable. That said, it would be a very bad idea for the House to take the approach of throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what, if anything, sticks. That approach could potentially trigger political blowback, giving the president’s allies more material with which to portray congressional Democrats as just a bunch of crazed and partisan attack dogs. And it could also risk doing real institutional damage. When Congress passes an article of impeachment, it makes a statement about the nature of offenses that justify removal from office. It is important to be careful when making such statements so as not to create ill-considered precedents that will justify future mischief.

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In short, Congress should focus for impeachment purposes only on matters of unacceptable presidential conduct that are provable on the basis of currently available evidence and that are thus easily presentable to the Senate for judgment.

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We think Congress should focus its impeachment consideration—if, indeed, it now means to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry—on five major areas, each of which could easily support an article of impeachment.

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This is a very long article, which I hope DUers will read in its entirety.

But to list very briefly the five major areas they recommend focusing on, which get a dozen paragraphs (some very long) in the article:

1. Obstruction of justice and abuse of law enforcement institutions and personnel

2. Attempts to leverage the power of the presidency to cause investigation and prosecution of political opponents

3. Abuse of the president’s foreign policy authorities and misuse of congressionally appropriated money to induce a foreign head of state to violate the civil liberties of U.S. persons and interfere in a presidential election

4. The president’s efforts to obstruct or impede congressional investigations

5. Trump’s lying to the American public

[Karadeniz]

1. Sounds like a plan to me. I hoped knowingly lying to the public would be a charge.

[highplainsdem]

8. So do I.

[Cha]

2. Excellent advice from Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, & Benjamin Wittes

Thanks, !

[Mersky]

3. Journaling to read a little later

Thanks for posting it with your helpful summary!

[Cha]

4. Bookmarked!

[defacto7]

5. This is brilliant.

This is one of the only reasonable statements concerning impeachment and the Ukraine debacle I've heard today.

[Stargleamer]

6. Unfortunately his sexual abuse of girls and women won't be in there

including his rape of a 13-year old girl.

Nor alas will be his emolument clauses violations.

[highplainsdem]

7. kick

[highplainsdem]

9. Susan Hennessey tweet commenting on reported Dem plans:

She was commenting on this tweet from CNN's Manu Raju:

Link to tweet

Several Dems on House Judiciary say they want quick action on articles of impeachment resolution, hoping a vote could happen as soon as October.
The fear, some Ds say, is the longer the Ukraine controversy hangs out there, it could die down - and the public could lose interest

Hennessey's tweet:

Link to tweet

This is really smart. The record is there, move fast, have the vote, for e the Senate to confront. There is zero value in dragging this out in length litigation over documents and testimony.