happened one day after bob mueller testified and it became clear president trump was not going to get impeached. they need to stop him. they re view. yes. adam schiff makes the case what the president viewed with mueller as an exoneration and said, no holds barred. pick up the phone and do it again. so that s one case of the deaths. the invocation of the mueller report is also interesting as even just democrats on this committee and larger democratic caucus have a decision to make. do you write three or four, two or three narrow articles of impeachment based mainly on the ukraine call as abuse of power, bribery, call it what you will, then obstruction of congress, maybe obstruction of justice, stop. with footnotes about mueller saying it fits a pattern by the president but not specific arms of impeachment that have anything to do with the mueller report. more liberal members say stretch it out. do six or seven articles, take the second chapter of the mueller report, obstruction
value in the form of investigations or announcement of investigations and he did so corruptly for personal gain, then that would constitute bribery under the meaning of the constitution. and it would not be lawless. it would be bribery under the law. so the supreme court case and mcdonald interpreting the statute would not be relevant? the constitution is the supreme law and the constitution specifies what bribery means. federal statutes can t defeat what s in the constitution. thank you. professi p propre propre professor gerhardt? it s obstruction of any lawful proceeding. so that obstruction isn t limited to whatever is happening on the courts and obviously here
their invitation. so we will now proceed to questions under the five-minute rule. i yield myself five minutes for the purpose of questioning the witnesses. professor feldman, would you respond to professor turley s comments about bribery, especially about the relevance of the elements of criminal bribery? yes. bribery had a clear meaning to the framers. it was when the president using the power of his office solicited or receives something of personal value from someone affected by his official powers. i want to be very clear. the constitution is law. the koninstitution is the supre law of the land. professor turley is right you wouldn t want to it specifies bribery. bribery had a clear meaning. if the house believes that the president solicited something of
we can t charge the president with obstruction of congress for refusing all subpoenas as long as he has any fanciful claims. i want to respectfully disagree. his refusal to comply with those subpoenas is an independent event. it s apart from the courts. it s a direct assault on the legitimacy of this inquiry which is crucial to the exercise of this power. professor karlan, i ll give you a chance to respond. i wanted to respond to the first question about prescribe ri. although counsel for the min minority read the definitions of high and crime and misdemeanor, he didn t read the definition of bribery. i have the 1792 version of johnson s dictionary. there he defines bribery as the crime of giving or taking reward for bad practices. if you think it s a bad practice
as an academic i was pretty darn impressed. i just want to note one thing, which may explain part of our difference. the statutes today on bravery are written broadly just like they were back then. the meaning is subject to interpretation. they re written broadly because they don t want them to be too narrow. that was the case in the 18th century as they are today. but the idea that bad practices could be the definition of bribery, really? is that what you get from the contusion constitutional convection, bad practices? this is where i disagree. the other thing i just wanted to note is and i have so much respect for noah. i m going to just disagree on this point. i feel it is a rather circular