Of interest about high crimes and misdemeanors. Excerpts below:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...ers-saw-impeachment-high-crimes-misdemeanors/
"The initial clause borrowed from established concepts of impeachment in English law and state constitutions that allowed impeachment for “maladministration” — which means “basically just for being lousy at your job,” said Jeffrey A. Engel in an interview with The Washington Post. Engel is director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and co-author of “
Impeachment: An American History.”
“And [James] Madison and [George] Mason and others, I think quite rightly, argued that if the standard is simply being ineffective or incompetent, well, that’s always in the eye of the beholder,” Engel said.
"Some of the framers noted that impeachment was unavoidably a political process and worried it could devolve into a partisan tool.
Alexander Hamilton predicted in
Federalist Paper 65: “In many cases [impeachment] will connect itself with the preexisting factions ... and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
"They also worried that Congress, which they viewed as the primary governing body, might use impeachment threats to bend a president’s policy decisions. But it wasn’t feasible to give the impeachment power to the judiciary branch, since judges are appointed by the president and could end up being called to convict the very president who appointed them. (The chief justice of the United States oversees impeachment trials but does not vote.)"
"To mitigate this, the impeachment power was divided among the two chambers of Congress, and there was a two-thirds majority required to convict.
Plus, the standard for impeachment was changed from “maladministration” to the more stringent “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
There has been debate for centuries about what exactly “high crimes and misdemeanors” means. Engel said that, given that the concept of the presidency was created with Washington in mind, a good shorthand is, “Imagine something that you can’t imagine George Washington doing.”
He also said that “high crimes and misdemeanors” would have been no more mysterious to the framers than the expression “balls and strikes” is to us. In fact, in the
July 19 and
July 20 debate at the Constitutional Convention, Madison and others described several specific instances that would qualify.
“They say, ‘Well, what if a president works with a foreign power? Well, then of course he should be impeached. What if a president decides to try and make money in office? Well, of course he should be impeached. What if a president lies as part of his campaign? … Well, then of course he should be impeached,’” Engel said, before alleging,
“which really is Donald Trump’s biography.”
bystander says: In bold is the opinion. Did Obama lie or not lie during his campaign? Just asking. Did Obama work with a foreign power ("I'll have more flexibility after the election")? Did Obama make money while in office?
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