i m not sure what really ultimately will have been accomplished from that. then finally i disagree, the framers well-understood the common definition of bribery. that s been supplied in the bribery statute. i suppose reasonable people can disagree about this, i don t think a bribery defense has been shown. and short of that, as much as you want to talk about abuse of power, i think as professor turley correctly pointed out, abuse of power untethered from a high crime and misdemeanor which would be either treason, bribery, or some other high crime and misdemeanor is not sufficient to form a legitimate basis to remove a president from office. professor feldmann, i wonder what you made from the argument that this is a rush, that there s not enough evidence at this stage. it s seems very strange to me. first of all you have the call and that s a tremendous amount of evidence. furthermore, any lack of evidence that exists now is just a result of the fact that the
originalist future in that argument. the bribery theory being put forward is as flawed until 18th sear century as it is in this century. the statement made by one of my esteemed colleagues was that bribery wasn t really defined until much later. there is no bribery statute and that is certainly true, but it obviously had a meeting. bribery was not this overarching concept that chairman schiff indicated. quite to the contrary, the original standard was trae son and bribery. that led mason to object that it was too narrow. if bribery could include any time you did anything for personal interest instead of public interest, if you have this overarching definition, that exchange would have been completely useless. the framers didn t disagree with mason s view.
referring to a statute. and federal and i will say, i m not an expert on federal substantive federal criminal law. all i will say here is the bribery statute is a very complicated statute. so what they were thinking about was bribery as it was understood in the 18th century based on the common law up until that point. and that understanding was an understanding that someone and generally even then, it was mostly talking about a judge. it wasn t talking about a president because there was no president before that and i wasn t talking about the king, because the king could do no wrong. but what they were understanding then, was the idea that when you took private benefits or when you asked for private benefits, in what term for an official act in return for an official act or someone gave them to you to influence an official act, that was bribery.
the bribery theory being put forward is a flaw in the 18th century as it is in this century. the statement that was made by one of my esteemed colleagues is that bribery was not defined until much later. there was no bribery statute. that is certainly true. but it obviously had a meaning, that s why they put it in this important standard. bribery was not was not just overarching concept to that chairman schiff indicated. quite to the contrary. the original standard was treason and bribery. that led mason to object that it was too narrow. if bribery could include any time that you did anything for personal interest instead of public interest, the overarching definition, that exchange would ve been completely useless. the framers did not disagree with mason s view that bribery was too narrow. what they disagreed with was
removed from office for bribery, they weren t referring to a statute, and i will will say, i m not an expert on substantive federal criminal law. all i will say here is the bribery statute is a very complicated statute. so what they were thinking about was bribery as it was understood in the 18th century based on the common law up until that point. and that understanding was an understanding that someone, and generally even then it was mostly talking about a judge. it wasn t talking about a president because there was no president before that. it wasn t talking about the king because the king could do no wrong. what they were understanding then was the idea that, when you took private benefits or when you asked for private benefits in return for an official act or somebody gave them to you to influence an official act, that was bribery.