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
in a very emotional way, we re so divided as a country and it s critically important that impeachment doesn t become a tool in a divided society to undermine elections, and that s clearly true, and it s one of the reasons we ve only had two impeachment trials in the history of our nation, is because it s so hard to actually get an impeachment, for all the right reasons. here, though, he doesn t address the fundamental constitutional arguments that the other scholars laid out, particularly professor gerhardt, which is, if this is not impeachable, then there is no longer an impeachment power. that whole clause in the constitution is gone. and the reason for that goes to andrew s point about obstruction. if the president, which is its own article of impeachment, can literally prevent the evidence that would allow him to be impeached, then say he s not impeachable because the evidence doesn t exist, then there is no more impeachment clause. but the other thing that
to. our framers were committed to the idea that we as americans, we as americans decide our elections. we don t want foreign interference in those elections. and the reason we don t want foreign interference in those elections is because we re a self-determining democracy. and if i could just read one quotation to you that i think is helpful in understanding this, it s someone pointing to what he calls a straightforward principle. it is fundamental to the definition of our national political community that foreign citizens did a not have a constitutional right to participate in and thus may be excluded from activities of democratic self-government. and the person who wrote those words is now justice brett kavanaugh in upholding the constitutionality of a federal statute that denies foreign citizens the right to participate in our elections by spending money on electioneering or by giving money to pacs.
and whatever was wrong with this, despite the fact it was endangering our elections, despite the fact that it was endangering peace in europe, despite the fact that every expert, even those that donald trump had himself appointed, were telling him what he was doing was not good for the country, he did it anyway. that is astounding. and that should give us pause. it s an argument i ll call contemporary standards, for lack of anything better. jason johnson, politics editor at the root and among our contributors has also been watching and listening with us. jason, your assessment thus far. this is where i stand up for fellow professors like myself. there is a difference in what you get when professors are speaking versus long term sort of bureaucrats and staffers. and that s what i ve noticed in particular about just this morning s testimony. these are all individuals whose job it is, in their daily work, to explain things to people, to
the bar graphs show counties and the height of the bars show the total of the cast. you can see the parts of the country represented by democratic impeachment leaders voted overwhelmingly during the last presidential election for hillary clinton. also, the 2016 elections, lawyer campaign contributions tilted 90% for clinton and 3% for trump. i would like to turn to the partisan process that defines these proceedings. this is how the nixon impeachment effort was described. you are talking about the impeachmentment inquiry. this action was not patterson. it was supported by the overwhelming majority of both political parties and it was.