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'Grossly incompatible': What warrants impeachment?


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The Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” So what exactly is a high crime or high misdemeanor?

 

“Whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history,” Gerald Ford once half-joked.

If you want to be perfectly cynical, Ford was right. Two hundred and eighteen Democrats could impeach President Trump next week simply for being a Republican and nobody could stop them. The first count of impeachment could be raising taxes on San Francisco homeowners and no court could void the vote.

But in a healthy republic, we expect some justification more noble than simple will and power. We don’t expect majorities to apply blunt force. A proper statesman will articulate a principle and set standards for what counts as an impeachable offense.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown her weight behind the impeachment process following reports of Trump’s contacts with Ukraine’s president. We still don’t know all the facts, which makes it premature to take a position on impeachment. But since we don't know all the facts yet, this is the perfect time to lay out the proper standard for impeachment.:snip:

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The Latest Impeachment Frenzy Is About #Resistance, Not High Crimes And Misdemeanors

‘This has nothing to do with politics or partisanship.” That was how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it shortly before announcing the opening of an official impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump. Who is she trying to kid?

Despite the breathless commentary about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and a whistleblower report based on second-hand accounts of uncertain credibility, we know little about what transpired, much less whether it rises to the level of an impeachable offense. Democrats could have gone through the normal procedures to get the information from the White House rather than jump immediately to talk of impeachment. 

But the Democrats’ impeachment frenzy didn’t result from this news. It’s been in full flower since before Trump was even elected. Heck, there were calls for his impeachment before he’d even secured the Republican nomination.

Here’s just a partial timeline of the many previous calls for Trump’s impeachment that turned out to be frivolous:

March 2016: After just 15 states had held their Republican primaries, The New York Daily News ran an editorial with the headline “Impeach Trump.”:snip:

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