Solid Grounds: No matter how it ends for him, the legacy of President Donald Trump may be that he forced the country to take a lesson in Constitutional rule and the limits of power. It’s radically different from what the children of America learned when Bill Clinton was impeached.

  Hearings continue today before the House Judiciary Committee. Chairman Jerrold Nadler said, “I think the case we have if presented to a jury would be a guilty verdict in about three minutes flat.”

  Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani is offering evidence favoring trump that he says he gathered during a recent trip to Ukraine. 

  Over the weekend the majority staff of the House Judiciary Committee — the Democrats —issued a readable report, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” that every citizen should read.

  Digging into the writings and reasonings of the founders, the committee concludes that a president who puts himself and his own interests ahead of the country, and has used his presidential power to do it, has committed impeachable offenses even if the acts are not actually criminal.

  The reports says; “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.”

  It goes on; “The Framers were careful students of history and knew that threats to democracy can take many forms. They feared would-be monarchs, but also warned against fake populists, charismatic demagogues, and corrupt kleptocrats.”

 We like the alliteration in that passage, but moving on, the report says the Constitution left the grounds for impeachment intentionally vague because they couldn’t foresee every form of presidential misbehavior and didn’t want to define it too narrowly. They settled on “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” 

  The report goes on to discuss what those offenses are: 

Bribery

“Impeachable bribery occurs when the President offers, solicits, or accepts something of personal value to influence his own official actions. By rendering such bribery impeachable, the Framers sought to ensure that the Nation could expel a leader who would sell out the interests of ‘We the People’ for his own personal gain.” 

High Crimes & Misdemeanors

“Framers principally intended impeachment for three overlapping forms of Presidential wrongdoing: (1) abuse of power, (2) betrayal of the nation through foreign entanglements, and (3) corruption of office and elections. Any one of these violations of the public trust justifies impeachment; when combined in a single course of conduct, they state the strongest possible case for impeachment and removal from office.” 

  The Democratic report also says, “In sum, history teaches that “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” referred mainly to acts committed by public, using their power or privileges, that inflicted grave harm on our political order.

Criminality

“Impeachment and criminality must therefore be assessed separately — even though the President’s commission of indictable crimes may further support a case for impeachment and removal. Ultimately, the House must judge whether a President s conduct offends and endangers the Constitution itself.”

  The report concludes on the matter of criminality, “The Framers were not fools. They authorized impeachment for a reason, and that reason would have been gutted if impeachment were limited to crimes.” 

Abuse of Power

“The generation that rebelled against King George III knew what absolute power looked like. The Framers had other ideas when they organized our government, and so they placed the chief executive within the bounds of law.” 

“Put simply, President Nixon purported to control the exercise of powers that belonged solely to the House and not to him—including the power of inquiry that is vital to any Congressional judgments about impeachment.” 

Foreign Influence

“Where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House. Any claims to the contrary would horrify the Framers.” 

Obstruction:

“When the House probes a President’s state of mind, its mandate is to find the facts. There is no room for legal fictions or lawyerly tricks that distort a clear assessment of the President’s thinking. That means evaluating the President’s explanations to see if they ring true. The question is not whether the President’s conduct could have resulted from innocent motives. It is whether the President’s real reasons—the ones actually in his mind as he exercised power—were legitimate. The Framers designed impeachment to root out abuse and corruption, even when a President masks improper intent with cover stories.”

Failed Attempts:

“As a matter of settled constitutional law, and contrary to recent suggestions otherwise, attempted Presidential wrongdoing can be impeachable.” 

“The Nation is not required to cross its fingers and hope White House staff will persist in ignoring or sidelining a President who orders them to execute “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Nor can a President escape impeachment just because his corrupt plan to abuse power or manipulate elections was discovered and abandoned.”

Read the full impeachment report here.

In Other Business: The World Anti-Doping Agency decided today to ban Russia from the 2020 Olympics and the Winter Games and World Cup in 2022 for systematic juicing. — At least five people are dead, several injured, and some missing in New Zealand after the eruption of an island volcano that is a popular tourist attraction. — In what may have been the biggest rally so far, a pro-Democracy demonstration in Hong Kong stretched on for miles yesterday in the city’s streets.

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