In case you’ve been listening to the right wing propaganda machine, here’s political Professor Keith Whittington to set you straight:
Trump may not have committed acts that justify his immediate removal from office, but the constitutional standard is not whether he has committed an ordinary criminal offense. To support an impeachment, there does not need to be a crime, only a high crime and misdemeanor. A president who egregiously misuses the powers of his office or engages in conduct grossly incompatible with the dignity of his office has forfeited the right to continue to occupy his office and is subject to the constitutional judgment of the Senate acting as a court of impeachment. The House and the Senate might conclude that accusations of misconduct are ungrounded or that remedy of removal is unwarranted, but the misconduct that they might assess need not involve violations of the criminal law.
The Constitution provides a variety of tools to protect the country from a president who abuses his power. The people can remove him by election. The courts can check him by judicial decision. The legislature can counter him with the power of the purse, the power to confirm officers and the power to pass legislation. In extreme circumstances, the House and the Senate can also combine forces to prematurely end the president’s term of office through impeachment and removal. Limiting the impeachment power to cases involving criminal acts would leave the country more vulnerable to abusive government officials and encourage more abuse of government power. The men who designed the Constitution knew better than to do that. Americans should not weaken that instrument by misconstruing it.
The President’s lawyers have already argued in court that he should be immune to prosecution and, amazingly, even investigation of alleged crimes; the suggestion that, in this context, that the President needs to be guilty of a crime of which he could not be investigated or prosecuted would be to place the President in a hermetically sealed box, immune from punishment for mundane crimes for at least his term in office, and even beyond for Federal crimes if he can find a way to have a blanket pardon applied to all of his actions (the Executive may not pardon criminals convicted of crimes in state courts).
For the reader who approves of this scenario, I shall remind you that this would apply equally well to Presidents from competing parties. If this does not dismay you, either you believe the GOP will never fall out of power, a dubious belief unsupported by historical norms and by the performance of current GOP members of Congress and, for that matter, President Trump (just search this blog on ‘Trump’ to see just a few instances of his vast incompetency). or you need to get back in the habit of thinking for yourself.
No offense, kind reader.
But let’s stipulate that the President is immune to criminal investigation and prosecution. The position of the Presidency, as we have been reminded from time to time during the Trump Administration, is highly important and should not be subjected to petty interference. Allied with this concern, but going unmentioned, is the importance that the occupant of the office be competent. Competency doesn’t appear to be treated in law very often, as it’s often a matter of opinion; the matter of the consequences of incompetency, however, is not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of fact: inability to fulfill the responsibilities of the Office (think of the response to Hurricane Katrina), degradation of civil rights, declination of position, power, and, at its worst, disaster for the citizens of the nation.
The suggestion that the President must commit a crime, for which he or she is immune to investigation or prosecution, is a laugh, and should be treated that way. Next time you see that suggestion in print, send an email suggesting the source of the suggestion should take up a new job as a stand-up comedian.
And this applies double for the President who has no loyalty to their nation.
