Robbery thats burglary, ill get it right. And in this situation youve got somebody really caught in the middle of it, and that doesnt excuse the person from the consequences. Professors, weve talked about abuse of power and bribery. When we started we said we would also discuss obstruction of congress. So i would like to ask you some questions about obstruction of congress. Professor gerhardt, in your view, is there enough evidence here to charge President Trump with the high crime and misdemeanor of obstruction of congress . I think theres more than enough. As i mentioned in my statement, just to really underscore this, the third article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against president nixon charged him with misconduct because he had failed to comply with four legislative subpoenas. Here it is far more than four
that this president has failed to comply with. And he has ordered the Executive Branch as well not to cooperate with congress. Those together with a
Somebody really caught in the middle of it, and that doesnt excuse the person from the consequences. Professors, weve talked about abuse of power and bribery. When we started, we said we would also discuss Obstruction Of Congress. So id like to ask you some questions about Obstruction Of Congress. Professor gerhardt, in your view, is there enough evidence here to charge President Trump with the high crime and misdemeanor of Obstruction Of Congress . I think theres more than enough. As i mention in my statement, just to really underscore this, the third article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee against president nixon charged him with misconduct because he failed to comply with four legislative subpoenas. Here it is far more than four that this president has failed to comply with and hes ordered
the Executive Branch as well not to cooperate the congress. Those together with a lot of other evidence suggests Obstruction Of Congress. Professor karlan, do you agree .
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.
there is not an originalist future in that argument. the bribery theory being put forward is as flawed in the 18th century as it is in this century. the statement that is made by one of my esteemed colleagues is that bribery wasn t really defined until much later. there was no bribery statute. and that is certainly true. but it obviously had a meaning. that s why they put it in this important standard. bribery was not this overarching concept 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 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 that bribery was too narrow.
mason i m sorry, by madison, ultimately the framers agreed. and then morris who was referred to earlier, did say we need to adopt the standard. but what was left out was what came afterwards. what morris said is that we need to protect against bribery because we don t want anything like what happened with louie xiv and charles ii. the example he gave of bribery was accepting actually money as the head of state. so what had happened in that example that morris gave, his example of bribery, was that louis xiv, who was a bit of a recidivist when it came to bribes, gave charles ii a huge amount of money as well as other benefits including apparently a french mistress, in exchange for