prosecutor s office, gathered information about, put together as criminal evidence, evidence of criminal behavior by the president, and referred it to congress who then put it forward in articles of impeachment. but they saw this as criminal behavior by the president, that aside from the question of whether or not the president could be indicted, this was a matter not just of congressional interest, it was a matter of the president being a felon. right. so this is, i think, a really important point, and it has immediate implications for the present day. we off throw around questions like oh, did the president just obstruct justice? we talk in this language that refers to specific criminal statutes or categories of criminal statutes. let s distinguish between impeding an investigation and the crime of obstruction of justice. and what if you look at those
this stuff unsealed, we know this was not a matter that congress became interested in, these are all things that prosecutors, special prosecutor s office, gathered information about, put together as criminal evidence, evidence of criminal behavior by the president, and referred it to congress, who then put it forward in articles of impeachment. but they saw this as criminal behavior by the president, that aside from the question of whether or not the president could be indicted, this was a matter not just of congressional interest, it was a matter of the president being a felon. right. so this is, i think, a really important point, and it has immediate implications for the present day. we often throw around questions like, oh, did the president just obstruct justice? we talk in this language that refers to specific criminal statutes or categories of criminal statutes. let s distinguish between
and part of my point here is that the impeachment question is a different question than the criminal question. it is possible that you ve done both. the criminal investigation can produce the grounds for impeachment. but the question congress should be asking itself is not, did the president commit a crime in these interactions with paul manafort? because to add to all this crazy stuff that has parallels with watergate, what the president appears to have done, which was we might say collude with a felon, a convicted felon to gather intelligence on federal prosecutors who work for the united states department of justice, which is to say for him, his administration, and, you know, he we can ask the question, how does that interact with the criminal law? but the first and most important
the fbi directorship over a senior justice department official as a sort of inducement to handle the investigation the way the president wants. you know, that kind of sounds familiar, too. and number seven, it describes the president looking and seeking from senior justice department officials to know whether they have developed adverse information about the president himself. and i think the reason this is a powerful article is that all seven of those items are have direct parallels in the news of today. and of the last 18 months. and so i don t like the article is an article about history. it s an article about how congress experienced that set of things. and by the way, they didn t look at it and say, you know, we
it is possible that you ve done both. the criminal investigation can produce the grounds for impeachment. the question congress should be asking is not did the president commit a crime in these interactions say with paul manafort, because add to all this crazy stuff that has parallels with watergate, what the president appears to have done, which was we might say collude with a felon, a convicted felon to gather intelligence on federal prosecutors who work for the united states department of justice, which is to say for him, his administration, and, you know, he we can ask the question how does that interact with the criminal law? but the first and most important question to ask about that, is that an acceptable thing for the president to do? is it acceptable for the president to screw up his own