Written Statement
Jonathan Turley,
Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law
The George Washington University Law School
“The Impeachment Inquiry Into President Donald J. Trump:
The Constitutional Basis For Presidential Impeachment”
1100 House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
December 4, 2019

I. INTRODUCTION
Chairman Nadler, ranking member Collins, members of the Judiciary Committee,
my name is Jonathan Turley, and I am a law professor at George Washington University
where I hold the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law.1 It is an honor
to appear before you today to discuss one of the most solemn and important constitutional
functions bestowed on this House by the Framers of our Constitution: the impeachment
of the President of the United States.
Twenty-one years ago, I sat here before you, Chairman Nadler, and other
members of the Judiciary Committee to testify on the history and meaning of the
constitutional impeachment standard as part of the impeachment of President William
Jefferson Clinton. I never thought that I would have to appear a second time to address
the same question with regard to another sitting president. Yet, here we are. Some
elements are strikingly similar. The intense rancor and rage of the public debate is the
same. It was an atmosphere that the Framers anticipated. Alexander Hamilton warned
that charges of impeachable conduct “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole
community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”2
As with the Clinton impeachment, the Trump impeachment has again proven Hamilton’s
words to be prophetic. The stifling intolerance for opposing views is the same. As was
the case two decades ago, it is a perilous environment for a legal scholar who wants to
1

I appear today in my academic capacity to present views founded in prior academic
work on impeachment and the separation of powers. My testimony does not reflect the
views or approval of CBS News, the BBC, or the newspapers for which I write as a
columnist. My testimony was written exclusively by myself with editing assistance from
Nicholas Contarino, Andrew Hile, Thomas Huff, and Seth Tate.
2

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FEDERALIST NO. 65 (1788), reprinted in THE FEDERALIST
PAPERS 396, 396-97 (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).

1

 explore the technical and arcane issues normally involved in an academic examination of
a legal standard ratified 234 years ago. In truth, the Clinton impeachment hearing proved
to be an exception to the tenor of the overall public debate. The testimony from
witnesses, ranging from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to Laurence Tribe to Cass Sunstein,
contained divergent views and disciplines. Yet the hearing remained respectful and
substantive as we all grappled with this difficult matter. I appear today in the hope that
we can achieve that same objective of civil and meaningful discourse despite our goodfaith differences on the impeachment standard and its application to the conduct of
President Donald J. Trump.
I have spent decades writing about impeachment3 and presidential powers4 as an
academic and as a legal commentator. My academic work reflects the bias of a
Madisonian scholar. I tend to favor Congress in disputes with the Executive Branch and I
have been critical of the sweeping claims of presidential power and privileges made by
modern Administrations. My prior testimony mirrors my criticism of the expansion of
executive powers and privileges.5 In truth, I have not held much fondness for any
3

See, e.g., Jonathan Turley, "From Pillar to Post": The Prosecution of Sitting Presidents,
37 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 1049 (2000); Jonathan Turley, Senate Trials and Factional
Disputes: Impeachment as a Madisonian Device, 49 DUKE L.J. 1 (1999); Jonathan Turley,
The "Executive Function" Theory, the Hamilton Affair and Other Constitutional
Mythologies, 77 N.C. L. REV. 1791 (1999); Symposium, Jonathan Turley, Congress as
Grand Jury: The Role of the House of Representatives in the Impeachment of an
American President, 67 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 735 (1999); Symposium, Jonathan Turley,
Reflections on Murder. Misdemeanors. and Madison, 28 HOFSTRA L. REV. 439 (1999).
4

See, e.g., Jonathan Turley, A Fox In The Hedges: Vermeule’s Optimizing
Constitutionalism For A Suboptimal World, 82 U. CHI. L. REV. 517 (2015); Jonathan
Turley, Madisonian Tectonics: How Function Follows Form in Constitutional and
Architectural Interpretation, 83 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 305 (2015); Jonathan Turley,
Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 B.U. L. REV. 1523 (2013); Jonathan
Turley, Presidential Records and Popular Government: The Convergence of
Constitutional and Property Theory in Claims of Control and Ownership of Presidential
Records, 88 CORNELL L. REV. 651 (2003); Jonathan Turley, The Military Pocket
Republic, 97 NW. L. REV. 1 (2002); Jonathan Turley, Tribunals and Tribulations: The
Antithetical Elements of the Military Justice System in a Madisonian Democracy, 70
GEO. WASH. L. REV. 649 (2002).
5

See United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, “Executive
Privilege and Congressional Oversight,” May 15, 2019 (testimony of Professor
Jonathan Turley); United States House of Representatives, House Judiciary Committee,
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, The National
Emergencies Act of 1976, Feb. 28, 2019 (testimony of Professor Jonathan Turley);
United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, The Confirmation of William Pelham
Barr As Attorney General of the United States Supreme Court, Jan. 16, 2019 (testimony
of Professor Jonathan Turley); United States Senate, Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight
and Emergency Management, “War Powers and the Effects of Unauthorized Military

2

 president in my lifetime. Indeed, the last president whose executive philosophy I
consistently admired was James Madison.
In addition to my academic work, I am a practicing criminal defense lawyer.
Among my past cases, I represented the United States House of Representatives as lead
counsel challenging payments made under the Affordable Care Act without congressional
authorization. I also served as the last lead defense counsel in an impeachment trial in the
Senate. With my co-lead counsel Daniel Schwartz, I argued the case on behalf of federal
judge Thomas Porteous. (My opposing lead counsel for the House managers was Adam
Schiff). In addition to my testimony with other constitutional scholars at the Clinton
impeachment hearings, I also represented former Attorneys General during the Clinton
impeachment litigation over privilege disputes triggered by the investigation of
Independent Counsel Ken Starr. I also served as lead counsel in a bill of attainder case,
the sister of impeachment that will be discussed below.6
Engagements on Federal Spending”, June 6, 2018 (testimony of Professor Jonathan
Turley); United States Senate, Confirmation Hearing For Judge Neil M. Gorsuch To Be
Associate Justice of the United States, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary,
Mar. 21, 2017 (testimony of Professor Jonathan Turley); United States House of
Representatives, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, “Affirming
Congress' Constitutional Oversight Responsibilities: Subpoena Authority and Recourse
for Failure to Comply with Lawfully Issued Subpoenas,” Sept. 14, 2016 (testimony and
prepared statement of Jonathan Turley); United States House of Representatives, House
Judiciary Committee, Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, “Examining
The Allegations of Misconduct of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen” June 22, 2016
(testimony and prepared statement of Jonathan Turley); United States Senate,
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “The Administrative
State: An Examination of Federal Rulemaking,” Apr. 20, 2016 (testimony and prepared
statement of Jonathan Turley); United States House of Representatives, House Judiciary
Committee, Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, “The Chevron
Doctrine: Constitutional and Statutory Questions in Judicial Deference to Agencies,”
Mar. 15, 2016 (testimony and prepared statement of Jonathan Turley); Authorization to
Initiate Litigation for Actions by the President Inconsistent with His Duties Under the
Constitution of the United States: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on Rules, 113th Cong.
(2014) (prepared statement of Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest
Law); Enforcing The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws:
Hearing Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 113th Cong. 30–47 (2014) (testimony
and prepared statement of Jonathan Turley) (discussing nonenforcement issues and the
rise of the Fourth Branch); Executive Overreach: The President’s Unprecedented
“Recess” Appointments: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 112th Cong.
35–57 (2012) (prepared statement of Jonathan Turley); see also Confirmation Hearing
for Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynch: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the
Judiciary, 114th Cong. (2015) (prepared statement of Jonathan Turley). Parts of my
testimony today is taken from this prior work.
6

Foretich v. United States, 351 F.3d 1198 (D.C. Cir. 2003).

3

 I would like to start, perhaps incongruously, with a statement of three irrelevant
facts. First, I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016 and I
have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama. Second, I have been highly
critical of President Trump, his policies, and his rhetoric, in dozens of columns. Third, I
have repeatedly criticized his raising of the investigation of the Hunter Biden matter with
the Ukrainian president. These points are not meant to curry favor or approval. Rather
they are meant to drive home a simple point: one can oppose President Trump’s policies
or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just
woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment
of an American president. To put it simply, I hold no brief for President Trump. My
personal and political views of President Trump, however, are irrelevant to my
impeachment testimony, as they should be to your impeachment vote. Today, my only
concern is the integrity and coherence of the constitutional standard and process of
impeachment. President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the
wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come. I am concerned
about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of
anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would
stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest
evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.7 That
does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and,
at times, bitterly divided.
Although I am citing a wide body of my relevant academic work on these
questions, I will not repeat that work in this testimony. Instead, I will focus on the history
and cases that bear most directly on the questions facing this Committee. My testimony
will first address relevant elements of the history and meaning of the impeachment
standard. Second, I will discuss the past presidential impeachments and inquiries in the
context of this controversy. Finally, I will address some of the specific alleged
impeachable offenses raised in this process. In the end, I believe that this process has
raised serious and legitimate issues for investigation. Indeed, I have previously stated that
a quid pro quo to force the investigation of a political rival in exchange for military aid
can be impeachable, if proven. Yet moving forward primarily or exclusively with the
Ukraine controversy on this record would be as precarious as it would premature. It
comes down to a type of constitutional architecture. Such a slender foundation is a red
flag for architects who operate on the accepted 1:10 ratio between the width and height of
7

The only non-modern presidential impeachment is an outlier in this sense. As I
discussed below, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson was the shortest period from the
underlying act (the firing of the Secretary of War) to the adoption of the articles of
impeachment. However, the House had been preparing for such an impeachment before
the firing and had started investigations of matters referenced in the articles. This was
actually the fourth impeachment, with the prior three attempts extending over a year with
similar complaints and inquiries. Thus, the actual period of the impeachment of Johnson
and the operative record is debatable. I have previously discussed the striking similarities
between the Johnson and Trump inquiries in terms of the brevity of the investigation and
narrowest of the alleged impeachable offenses.

4

 a structure. The physics are simple. The higher the building, the wider the foundation.
There is no higher constitutional structure than the impeachment of a sitting president
and, for that reason, an impeachment must have a wide foundation in order to be
successful. The Ukraine controversy has not offered such a foundation and would easily
collapse in a Senate trial.
Before I address these questions, I would like to make one last cautionary
observation regarding the current political atmosphere. In his poem “The Happy
Warrior,” William Wordsworth paid homage to Lord Horatio Nelson, a famous admiral
and hero of the Napoleonic Wars. Wordsworth began by asking “Who is the happy
Warrior? Who is he what every man in arms should wish to be?” The poem captured the
deep public sentiment felt by Nelson’s passing and one reader sent Wordsworth a
gushing letter proclaiming his love for the poem. Surprisingly, Wordsworth sent back an
admonishing response. He told the reader “you are mistaken; your judgment is affected
by your moral approval of the lines.”8 Wordsworth’s point was that it was not his poem
that the reader loved, but its subject. My point is only this: it is easy to fall in love with
lines that appeal to one’s moral approval. In impeachments, one’s feeling about the
subject can distort one’s judgment on the true meaning or quality of an argument. We
have too many happy warriors in this impeachment on both sides. What we need are
more objective noncombatants, members willing to set aside political passion in favor of
constitutional circumspection. Despite our differences of opinion, I believe that this
esteemed panel can offer a foundation for such reasoned and civil discourse. If we are to
impeach a president for only the third time in our history, we will need to rise above this
age of rage and genuinely engage in a civil and substantive discussion. It is to that end
that my testimony is offered today.

II. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORY AND MEANING OF
THE IMPEACHMENT STANDARD
Divining the intent of the Framers often borders on necromancy, with about the
same level of reliability. Fortunately, there are some questions that were answered
directly by the Framers during the Constitutional and Ratification Conventions. Any
proper constitutional interpretation begins with the text of the Constitution. Indeed, such
interpretations ideally end with the text when there is clarity as to a constitutional
standard or procedure. Five provisions are material to impeachment cases, and therefore
structure our analysis:
Article I, Section 2: The House of Representatives shall chuse their
Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of
Impeachment. U.S. Const. art. I, cl. 8.
Article I, Section 3: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all
Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or
8

ALEXANDER BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SUPREME COURT AT THE
BAR OF POLITICS 2 (Yale, 1962).

5

 Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief
Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the
Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. U.S. Const. art. I, 3, cl.
6.
Article I, Section 3: Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend
further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy
any Office of honor, Trust, or Profit under the United States: but the Party
convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial,
Judgment, and Punishment, according to the Law. U.S. Const. art. I, 3, cl.
7.
Article II, Section 2: [The President] shall have Power to grant Reprieves
and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of
Impeachment. U.S. Const., art. II, 2, cl. 1.
Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of
the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
U.S. Const. art. II, 4.
For the purposes of this hearing, it is Article II, Section 4 that is the focus of our attention
and, specifically, the meaning of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors.” It is telling that the actual constitutional standard is contained in Article
II (defining executive powers and obligations) rather than Article I (defining legislative
powers and obligations). The location of that standard in Article II serves as a critical
check on service as a president, qualifying the considerable powers bestowed upon the
Chief Executive with the express limitations of that office. It is in this sense an executive,
not legislative, standard set by the Framers. For presidents, it is essential that this
condition be clear and consistent so that they are not subject to the whim of shifting
majorities in Congress. That was a stated concern of the Framers and led to the adoption
of the current standard and, equally probative, the express rejection of other standards.
A. Hastings and the English Model of Impeachments
It can be fairly stated that American impeachments stand on English feet.9
However, while the language of our standard can be directly traced to English precedent,
the Framers rejected the scope and procedures of English impeachments. English
impeachments are actually instructive as a model rejected by the Framers due to its
history of abuse. Impeachments in England were originally quite broad in terms of the
basis for impeachment as well as those subject to impeachments. Any citizen could be
9

Much of this history is taken from earlier work, including Jonathan Turley, Senate
Trials and Factional Disputes: Impeachment as a Madisonian Device, 49 DUKE L.J. 1
(1999).

6

 impeached, including legislators. Thus, in 1604, John Thornborough, Bishop of Bristol,
was impeached for writing a book on the controversial union with Scotland.10
Thornborough was a member of the House of Lords, and his impeachment proved
one of the many divisive issues between the two houses that ended in a draw. The Lords
would ultimately rebuke the Bishop, but the House of Commons failed to secure a
conviction. Impeachments could be tried by the Crown, and the convicted subjected to
incarceration and even execution. The early standard was breathtakingly broad, including
“treasons, felonies, and mischiefs done to our Lord, The King” and “divers deceits.” Not
surprisingly, critics and political opponents of the Crown often found themselves the
subject of such impeachments. Around 1400, procedures formed for impeachment but
trials continued to serve as an extension of politics, including expressions of opposition to
Crown governance by Parliament. Thus, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was
impeached in 1386 for such offenses as appointing incompetent officers and “advising
the King to grant liberties and privileges to certain persons to the hindrance of the due
execution of the laws.” Others were impeached for “giving pernicious advice to the
Crown” and “malversations and neglects in office; for encouraging pirates; for official
oppression, extortions, and deceits; and especially for putting good magistrates out of
office, and advancing bad.”11
English impeachments were hardly a model system. Indeed, they were often not
tried to verdict or were subject to a refusal to hold a trial by the House of Lords.
Nevertheless, there was one impeachment in particular that would become part of the
constitutional debates: the trial of Governor General Warren Hastings of the East India
Company.12 The trial would captivate colonial figures as a challenge to Crown authority
while highlighting all of the flaws of English impeachments. Indeed, it is a case that bears
some striking similarities to the allegations swirling around the Ukrainian controversy.
Hastings was first appointed as the Governor of Bengal and eventually the
Governor-General in India. It was a country like Ukraine, rife with open corruption and
bribery. The East India Company held quasi-governing authority and was accused of
perpetuating such corruption. Burisma could not hold a candle to the East India
Company. Hastings imposed British control over taxation and the courts. He intervened
in military conflicts to secure concessions. His bitter feuds with prominent figures even
led to a duel with British councilor Philip Francis, who Hastings shot and wounded. The
record was heralded by some and vilified by others. Among the chief antagonists was
Edmund Burke, one of the intellectual giants of his generation. Burke despised Hastings,
who he described as the "captain-general of iniquity" and a “spider of Hell.” Indeed, even
with the over-heated rhetoric of the current hearings, few comments have reached the
level of Burke’s denouncement of Hastings as a “ravenous vulture devouring the
10

See COLIN G.C. TITE, IMPEACHMENT AND PARLIAMENTARY JUDICATURE IN EARLY
STUART ENGLAND 57 (1974).
11

2 JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES § 798,
at 268-69 (rev. ed. 1991).
12

See Turley, Senate Trials, supra note 3. See also Jonathan Turley, Adam Schiff’s
Capacious Definition Of Bribery Was Tried In 1787, WALL ST. J., Nov. 28, 2019.

7

 carcasses of the dead.” Burke led the impeachment for bribery and other forms of abuse
of power – proceedings that would take seven years. Burke made an observation that is
also strikingly familiar in the current controversy. He insisted in a letter to Francis that
the case came down to intent and Hastings’ defenders would not except any evidence as
incriminating:
“Most of the facts, upon which we proceed, are confessed; some of them
are boasted of. The labour will be on the criminality of the facts, where
proof, as I apprehend, will not be contested. Guilt resides in the intention.
But as we are before a tribunal, which having conceived a favourable
opinion of Hastings (or what is of more moment, very favourable wishes
for him) they will not judge of his intentions by the acts, but they will
qualify his Acts by his presumed intentions. It is on this preposterous
mode of judging that he had built all the Apologies for his conduct, which
I have seen. Excuses, which in any criminal court would be considered
with pity as the Straws, at which poor wretches drowning will catch, and
which are such as no prosecutor thinks is worth his while to reply to, will
be admitted in such a House of Commons as ours as a solid defence …
We know that we bring before a bribed tribunal a prejudged cause. In that
situation all that we have to do is make a case strong in proof and in
importance, and to draw inferences from it justifiable in logick, policy and
criminal justice. As to all the rest, it is vain and idle.”13
That is an all-too-familiar refrain for the current controversy. Impeachment cases often
come down to a question of intent, as does the current controversy. It also depends
greatly on the willingness of the tribunal to consider the facts in a detached and neutral
manner. Burke doubted the ability of the “bribed tribunal” to guarantee a fair trial—a
complaint heard today on both sides of the controversy. Yet, ultimately for Burke, the
judgment of history has not been good. While many of us think Burke truly believed the
allegations against Hastings, Hastings was eventually acquitted and Burke ended up
being censured after the impeachment.
Ultimately, the United States would incorporate the language of “high crimes and
misdemeanors” from English impeachments, but fashion a very different standard and
process for such cases.
B. The American Model of Impeachment
Colonial impeachments did occur with the same dubious standards and
procedures that marked the English impeachments. Indeed, impeachments were used in
the absence of direct political power. Much like parliamentary impeachments, the
colonial impeachments became a way of contesting Crown governance. Thus, the first
colonial impeachment in 1635 targeted Governor John Harvey of Virginia for
13

Letter from Edmund Burke to Philip Frances, in 5 THE CORRESPONDENCE OF EDMUND
BURKE 241 (Holden Furber ed., 1965).

8

 misfeasance in office, including tyrannical conduct in office. Likewise, the 1706
impeachment of James Logan, Pennsylvania provincial agent and secretary of the
Pennsylvania council, was based largely on political grievances including “a wicked
intent to create Divisions and Misunderstandings between him and the people.” These
colonial impeachments often contained broad or ill-defined grounds for impeachment for
such things as “loss of public trust.” Some impeachments involved Framers, from John
Adams to Benjamin Franklin, and most were certainly known to the Framers as a whole.
Given this history, when the Framers met in Philadelphia to craft the Constitution,
impeachment was understandably raised, including the Hastings impeachment, which had
yet to go to trial in England. However, there was a contingent of Framers that viewed any
impeachment of a president as unnecessary and even dangerous. Charles Pinckney of
South Carolina, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, and Rufus King of Massachusetts
opposed such a provision.14 That opposition may have been due to the history of the use
of impeachment for political purposes in both England and the colonies that I just
discussed. However, they were ultimately overruled by the majority who wanted this
option included into the Constitution. As declared by William Davie of North Carolina,
impeachment was viewed as the “essential security for the good behaviour of the
Executive.”
Unlike the English impeachments, the American model would be limited to
judicial and executive officials. The standard itself however led to an important exchange
between George Mason and James Madison:
“Col. Mason. Why is the provision restrained to Treason & bribery only?
Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many great and
dangerous offense. Hastings is not guilty of Treason. Attempts to subvert
the Constitution may not be Treason as above defined - As bills of
attainder which have saved the British Constitution are forbidden, it is the
more necessary to extend: the power of impeachments.
He movd. to add after “bribery” “or maladministration.”
Mr. Gerry seconded him Mr. Madison[.] So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during
pleasure of the Senate.
Mr. Govr Morris[.] It will not be put in force & can do no harm - An
election of every four years will prevent maladministration.
Col. Mason withdrew “maladministration” & substitutes “other high
crimes & misdemeanors” (“agst. the State”).

14

Turley, Senate Trials, supra note 3, at 34.

9

 On the question thus altered [Ayes - 8; Noes - 3]”15
In the end, the Framers would reject various prior standards including “corruption,”
“obtaining office by improper means”, betraying his trust to a foreign power,
“negligence,” “perfidy,” “peculation,” and “oppression.” Perfidy (or lying) and
peculation (self-dealing) are particularly interesting in the current controversy given
similar accusations against President Trump in his Ukrainian comments and conduct.
It is worth noting that, while Madison objected to the inclusion of
maladministration in the standard in favor of the English standard of “high crimes and
misdemeanors,” he would later reference maladministration as something that could be
part of an impeachment and declared that impeachment could address “the incapacity,
negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.”16 Likewise, Alexander Hamilton referred
to impeachable offenses as “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public
men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”17 These
seemingly conflicting statements can be reconciled if one accepts that some cases
involving high crimes and misdemeanors can include such broader claims. Indeed, past
impeachments have alleged criminal acts while citing examples of lying and violations of
public trust. Many violations of federal law by presidents occur in the context of such
perfidy and peculation – aspects that help show the necessity for the extreme measure of
removal. Indeed, such factors can weigh more heavily in the United States Senate where
the question is not simply whether impeachable offenses have occurred but whether such
offenses, if proven, warrant the removal of a sitting president. However, the Framers
clearly stated they adopted the current standard to avoid a vague and fluid definition of a
core impeachable offense. The structure of the critical line cannot be ignored. The
Framers cited two criminal offenses—treason and bribery—followed by a reference to
“other high crimes and misdemeanors.” This is in contrast to when the Framers included
“Treason, Felony, or other Crime” rather than “high crime” in the Extradition Clause of
Article IV, Section 2. The word “other” reflects an obvious intent to convey that the
15

2 THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, 550 (Max Farrand ed., 1937).

16

Madison noted that there are times when the public should not have to wait for the
termination of a term to remove a person unfit for the office. Madison explained:
“[It is] indispensable that some provision should be made for defending
the Community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief
Magistrate. The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient
security. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might
pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression… In
the case of the Executive Magistracy which was to be administered by a
single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of
probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.”
See 2 RECORDS, supra note 15, at 65-66. Capacity issues however have never been the
subject of presidential impeachments. That danger was later address in the Twenty-Fifth
Amendment.
17

THE FEDERALIST NO. 65, supra note 2, at 396.

10

 impeachable acts other than bribery and treason were meant to reach a similar level of
gravity and seriousness (even if they are not technically criminal acts). This was clearly a
departure from the English model, which was abused because of the dangerous fluidity of
the standard used to accuse officials. Thus, the core of American impeachments was
intended to remain more defined and limited.
It is a discussion that should weigh heavily on the decision facing members of this
House.
III. PRIOR PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENTS AND THEIR RELEVANCE TO
THE CURRENT INQUIRY
As I have stressed, it is possible to establish a case for impeachment based on a
non-criminal allegation of abuse of power. However, although criminality is not required
in such a case, clarity is necessary. That comes from a complete and comprehensive
record that eliminates exculpatory motivations or explanations. The problem is that this is
an exceptionally narrow impeachment resting on the thinnest possible evidentiary record.
During the House Intelligence Committee proceedings, Democratic leaders indicated that
they wanted to proceed exclusively or primarily on the Ukrainian allegations and wanted
a vote by the end of December. I previously wrote that the current incomplete record is
insufficient to sustain an impeachment case, a view recently voiced by the New York
Times and other sources.18
Even under the most flexible English impeachment model, there remained an
expectation that impeachments could not be based on presumption or speculation on key
elements. If the underlying allegation could be non-criminal, the early English
impeachments followed a format similar to a criminal trial, including the calling of
witnesses. However, impeachments were often rejected by the House of Lords as facially
inadequate, politically motivated, or lacking sufficient proof. Between 1626 and 1715,
the House of Lords only held trials to verdict in five of the fifty-seven impeachment cases
brought. For all its failings, The House of Lords still required evidence of real offenses
supported by an evidentiary record for impeachment. Indeed, impeachments were viewed
as more demanding than bills of attainder.
A bill of attainder19 involves a legislative form of punishment. While a person
could be executed under a bill of attainder, it was still more difficult to sustain an
18

Editorial, Sondland Has Implicated the President and His Top Men, N.Y. TIMES (Nov.
20, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/opinion/sondland-impeachmenthearings.html (“It is essential for the House to conduct a thorough inquiry, including
hearing testimony from critical players who have yet to appear. Right now, the House
Intelligence Committee has not scheduled testimony from any witnesses after Thursday.
That is a mistake. No matter is more urgent, but it should not be rushed — for the
protection of the nation’s security, and for the integrity of the presidency, and for the
future of the Republic.”).
19

I also litigated this question as counsel in the successful challenge to the Elizabeth
Morgan Act, which was struck down as a bill of attainder. See Foretich v. United States.,
351 F.3d 1198 (D.C. Cir. 2003).

11

 impeachment action. That difficulty is clearly shown by the impeachment of Thomas
Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. Strafford was a key advisor to King Charles I, and was
impeached in 1640 for the subversion of “the Fundamental Laws and Government of the
Realms” and endeavoring “to introduce Arbitrary and Tyrannical Government against
Law.” Strafford contested both the underlying charges and the record. The House of
Commons responded by dropping the impeachment and adopting a bill of attainder. In
doing so, the House of Commons avoided the need to establish a complete evidentiary
record and Stafford was subject to the bill of attainder and executed. Fortunately, the
Framers had the foresight to prohibit bills of attainder. However, the different treatment
between the two actions reflects the (perhaps counterintuitive) difference in the
expectations of proof. Impeachments were viewed as requiring a full record subjected to
adversarial elements of a trial.
In the current case, the record is facially insufficient. The problem is not simply
that the record does not contain direct evidence of the President stating a quid pro quo, as
Chairman Schiff has suggested. The problem is that the House has not bothered to
subpoena the key witnesses who would have such direct knowledge. This alone sets a
dangerous precedent. A House in the future could avoid countervailing evidence by
simply relying on tailored records with testimony from people who offer damning
presumptions or speculation. It is not enough to simply shrug and say this is “close
enough for jazz” in an impeachment. The expectation, as shown by dozens of failed
English impeachments, was that the lower house must offer a complete and compelling
record. That is not to say that the final record must have a confession or incriminating
statement from the accused. Rather, it was meant to be a complete record of the key
witnesses that establishes the full range of material evidence. Only then could the body
reach a conclusion on the true weight of the evidence—a conclusion that carries
sufficient legitimacy with the public to justify the remedy of removal.
The history of American presidential impeachment shows the same restraint even
when there were substantive complaints against the conduct of presidents. Indeed, some
of our greatest presidents could have been impeached for acts in direct violation of their
constitutional oaths of office. Abraham Lincoln, for example, suspended habeas corpus
during the Civil War despite the fact that Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution leaves
such a suspension to Congress “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may
require it.” The unconstitutional suspension of the “Great Writ” would normally be
viewed as a violation of the greatest constitutional order. Other presidents faced
impeachment inquires that were not allowed to proceed, including John Tyler, Grover
Cleveland, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George
Bush. President Tyler faced some allegations that had some common elements to our
current controversy. Among the nine allegations raised by Rep. John Botts of Virginia,
Tyler was accused of initiating an illegal investigation of the custom house in New York,
withholding information from government agents, withholding actions necessary to “the
just operation of government” and “shameless duplicity, equivocation, and falsehood,
with his late cabinet and Congress.” Likewise, Cleveland was accused of high crimes and
misdemeanors that included the use of the appointment power for political purposes
(including influencing legislation) against the nation’s interest and “corrupt[ing] politics
through the interference of Federal officeholders.” Truman faced an impeachment call
over a variety of claims, including “attempting to disgrace the Congress of the United

12

 States”; “repeatedly withholding information from Congress”; and “making reckless and
inaccurate public statements, which jeopardized the good name, peace, and security of
the United States.”
These efforts reflect the long history of impeachment being used as a way to
amplify political differences and grievances. Such legislative throat clearing has been
stopped by the House by more circumspect members before articles were drafted or
passed. This misuse of impeachment has been plain during the Trump Administration.
Members have called for removal based on a myriad of objections against this President.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) filed a resolution in the House of Representatives for
impeachment after Trump called for players kneeling during the national anthem to be
fired.20 Others called for impeachment over President Trump’s controversial statement on
the Charlottesville protests.21 Rep. Steve Cohen’s (D-Tenn.) explained that “If the
president can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people
who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.”22 These calls have
been joined by an array of legal experts who have insisted that clear criminal conduct by
Trump, including treason, have been shown in the Russian investigation. Professor
Lawrence Tribe argued that Trump’s pardoning of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio is
clearly impeachable and could even be overturned by the courts.23 Richard Painter, chief
White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush and a professor at the University of
Minnesota Law School, declared that President Trump’s participation in fundraisers for
Senators, a common practice of all presidents in election years, is impeachable. Painter
insists that any such fundraising can constitute “felony bribery” since these senators will
likely sit in judgment in any impeachment trial. Painter declared “This is a bribe. Any
other American who offered cash to the jury before a trial would go to prison for felony

20

Nicole Cobler, Texas lawmaker calls for impeachment vote over Trump’s NFL
Remarks, DALLAS MORNING NEWS (Sept. 26, 2017, 12:08 PM),
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2017/09/26/texas-lawmaker-calls-forimpeachment-vote-over-trump-s-nfl-remarks/.
21

Jessica Estepa, Democratic lawmaker to file articles of impeachment over Trump’s
Charlottesville response, USA TODAY (Aug. 17, 2017, 11:58 AM),
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/08/17/democraticlawmaker-to-file-articles-of-impeachment-over-trump-charlottesvilleresponse/575892001/.
22

Michael Collins & Daniel Connolly, Rep. Cohen to file articles of impeachments
against Trump, THE TENNESSEAN (Aug. 17, 2017. 9:21 AM),
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/08/17/steve-cohen-impeach-presidenttrump-charlottesville/575764001/.
23

Laurence H. Tribe & Ron Fein, ‘Sheriff Joe’ is back in court. The impeachment inquiry
should pay attention, BOS. GLOBE (Oct. 23, 2019, 3:30 PM),
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/22/sheriff-joe-back-court-theimpeachment-inquiry-should-pay-attention/1Yv9YZmzwL93wP9gYIFj7J/story.html.

13

 bribery. But he can get away with it?”24 CNN Legal Analyst Jeff Toobin declared, on the
air, that Trump could be impeached solely on the basis of a tweet in which Trump
criticized then Attorney General Jeff Sessions for federal charges brought against two
Republican congressman shortly before the mid-term elections.25 CNN Legal Analyst and
former White House ethics attorney Norm Eisen claimed before the release of the
Mueller report (which ultimately rejected any knowing collusion or conspiracy by Trump
officials with Russian operatives) that the criminal case for collusion was “devastating”
and that Trump is “colluding in plain sight.”26 I have known many of these members and
commentators for years on a professional or personal basis. I do not question their sincere
beliefs on the grounds for such impeachments, but we have fundamental differences in
the meaning and proper use of this rarely used constitutional device.
As I have previously written,27 such misuses of impeachment would convert our
process into a type of no-confidence vote of Parliament. Impeachment has become an
impulse buy item in our raging political environment. Slate has even featured a running
“Impeach-O-Meter.” Despite my disagreement with many of President Trump’s policies
and statements, impeachment was never intended to be used as a mid-term corrective
option for a divisive or unpopular leader. To its credit, the House has, in all but one case,
arrested such impulsive moves before the transmittal of actual articles of impeachment to
the Senate. Indeed, only two cases have warranted submission to the Senate and one was
a demonstrative failure on the part of the House in adhering to the impeachment standard.
Those two impeachments—and the third near-impeachment of Richard Nixon—warrant
closer examination and comparison in the current environment.
A. The Johnson Impeachment
The closest of the three impeachments to the current (Ukrainian-based)
impeachment would be the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson. The most obvious
point of comparison is the poisonous political environment and the controversial style of
24

Jason Lemon, Trump Is Committing “Felony Bribery’ By Giving Cash To GOP
Senators Ahead Of Impeachment Trial: Ex-Bush Ethics Lawyer, NEWSWEEK (Oct. 31,
2019, 10:28 AM), https://www.newsweek.com/trump-committing-felony-bribery-givingfundraising-cash-gop-senators-ahead-impeachment-trial-1468946.
25

Veronica Stracqualursi, Toobin: 'Trump's attack against Sessions ''an 'impeachable
offense', CNN (Sept. 4, 2018, 11:09 AM),
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/04/politics/jeffrey-toobin-trump-sessions-tweetcnntv/index.html.
26

Ronn Blitzer, Former Obama Ethics Lawyer Says Trump is Now ‘Colluding In Plain
Sight’, LAW & CRIME (Feb. 27, 2018, 9:40 AM), https://lawandcrime.com/highprofile/fmr-obama-ethics-lawyer-says-trump-is-now-colluding-in-plain-sight/.
27

Jonathan Turley, What’s worse than leaving Trump in office? Impeaching him, WASH.
POST (Aug. 24, 2017. 11:05 AM),
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/24/whats-worsethan-leaving-trump-in-office-impeaching-him/.

14

 the president. As a Southerner who ascended to the presidency as a result of the Lincoln
assassination, Johnson faced an immediate challenge even before his acerbic and abrasive
personality started to take its toll. Adding to this intense opposition to Johnson was his
hostility to black suffrage, racist comments, and occupation of Southern states. He was
widely ridiculed as the “accidental President” and specifically described by
Representative John Farnsworth of Illinois, as an “ungrateful, despicable, besotted,
traitorous man.” Woodrow Wilson described that Johnson “stopped neither to understand
nor to persuade other men, but struck forward with crude, uncompromising force for his
object, attempting mastery without wisdom or moderation.”28 Johnson is widely regarded
as one of the worst presidents in history—a view that started to form significantly while
he was still in office.
The Radical Republicans in particular opposed Johnson, who was seen as
opposing retributive measures against Southern states and full citizenship rights for freed
African Americans. Johnson suggested hanging his political opponents and was widely
accused of lowering the dignity of his office. At one point, he even reportedly compared
himself to Jesus Christ. Like Trump, Johnson’s inflammatory language was blamed for
racial violence against both blacks and immigrants. He was also blamed for reckless
economic policies. He constantly obstructed the enforcement of federal laws and
espoused racist views that even we find shocking for that time. Johnson also engaged in
widespread firings that were criticized as undermining the functioning of government—
objections not unlike those directed at the current Administration.
While Johnson’s refusal to follow federal law and his efforts to disenfranchise
African Americans would have been viewed as impeachable (Johnson could not have
worked harder to counterpunch his way into an impeachment), the actual impeachment
proved relatively narrow. Radical Republicans and other members viewed Secretary of
War Edwin M. Stanton as an ally and a critical counterbalance to Johnson. Johnson held
the same view and was seen as planning to sack Stanton. To counter such a move (or lay
a trap for impeachment), the Radical Republicans passed the Tenure of Office Act to
prohibit a President from removing a cabinet officer without the appointment of a
successor by the Senate. To facilitate an impeachment, the drafters included a provision
stating that any violation of the Act would constitute a “high misdemeanor.” Violations
were criminal and punishable “upon trial and conviction . . . by a fine not exceeding ten
thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding ten years, or both.”29 The act was
repealed in 1887 and the Supreme Court later declared that its provisions were
presumptively constitutionally invalid.
Despite the facially invalid provisions, Johnson was impeached on eleven articles
of impeachment narrowly crafted around the Tenure in Office Act. Other articles added
intemperate language to unconstitutional limitations, impeaching Johnson for such
grievances as trying to bring Congress “into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt, and
reproach” and making “with a loud voice certain intemperate, inflammatory, and
scandalous harangues ....” Again, the comparison to the current impeachment inquiry is
28

WOODROW WILSON, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, vol. 5 (New York: Harper
and Bros., 1903).
29

Tenure in Office Act, ch. 154, 14 Stat. 430, 431 (1867).

15

 obvious. After two years of members and commentators declaring a host of criminal and
impeachable acts, the House is moving on the narrow grounds of an alleged quid pro quo
while emphasizing the intemperate and inflammatory statements of the president. The
rhetoric of the Johnson impeachment quickly outstripped its legal basis. In his
presentation to the Senate, House manager John Logan expressed the view of President
Johnson held by the Radical Republicans:
Almost from the time when the blood of Lincoln was warm on the floor of
Ford's Theatre, Andrew Johnson was contemplating treason to all the fresh
fruits of the overthrown and crushed rebellion, and an affiliation with and
a practical official and hearty sympathy for those who had cost hecatombs
of slain citizens, billions of treasure, and an almost ruined country. His
great aim and purpose has been to subvert law, usurp authority, insult and
outrage Congress, reconstruct the rebel States in the interests of treason…
and deliver all snatched from wreck and ruin into the hands of
unrepentant, but by him pardoned, traitors.
The Senate trial notably included key pre-trial votes on the evidentiary and procedural
rules. The senators unanimously agreed that the trial should be judicial, not political, in
character, but Johnson’s opponents set about stacking the rules to guarantee easy
conviction. On these votes, eleven Republicans broke from their ranks to insist on
fairness for the accused. They were unsuccessful. Most Republican members turned a
blind eye to the dubious basis for the impeachment. Their voters hated Johnson and cared
little about the basis for his removal. However, Chief Justice Chase and other senators
saw the flaws in the impeachment and opposed conviction. This included seven
Republican senators—William Pitt Fessenden, James Grimes, Edmund Ross, Peter Van
Winkle, John B. Henderson, Joseph Fowler, and Lyman Trumbull—who risked their
careers to do the right thing, even for a president they despised. They became known as
the “Republican Recusants.” Those seven dissenting Republicans represented a notinsignificant block of the forty-two Republican members voting in an intensely factional
environment. Taking up the eleventh article as the threshold vote on May 16, 1868, 35
senators voted to convict while 19 voted to acquit—short of the two-thirds majority
needed. Even after a ten-day delay with intense pressure on the defecting Republican
members, two additional articles failed by the same vote and the proceedings were ended.
The system prevailed despite the failure of a majority in the House and a majority of the
Senate.
The comparison of the Johnson and Trump impeachment inquiries is striking
given the similar political environments and the controversial qualities of the two
presidents. Additionally, there was another shared element: speed. This impeachment
would rival the Johnson impeachment as the shortest in history, depending on how one
counts the relevant days. In the Johnson impeachment, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
was dismissed on February 21, 1868, and a resolution of impeachment was introduced
that very day. On February 24, 1868, the resolution passed and articles of impeachment
prepared. On March 2-3, 1868, eleven articles were adopted. The members considered
the issue to be obvious in the Johnson case since the President had openly violated a
statute that expressly defined violations as “high misdemeanors.” Of course, the scrutiny

16

 of the underlying claims had been ongoing before the firing and this was the third
attempted impeachment. Indeed, Congress passed legislation on March 2, 1867—one
year before the first nine articles were adopted. Moreover, Johnson actually relieved
Stanton of his duties in August 1867, and the House worked on the expected
impeachment during this period. In December 1867, the House failed to adopt an
impeachment resolution based on many of the same grievances because members did not
feel that an actual crime had been committed. There were three prior impeachments with
similar elements. When Stanton was actually fired, Johnson’s leading opponent Rep.
Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania (who had been pushing for impeachment for over a
year) confronted the House members and demanded “What good did your moderation do
you? If you don’t kill the beast, it will kill you.” With the former termination and the
continued lobbying of Stevens, the House again moved to impeach and secured the votes.
Thus, the actual resolution and adoption dates are a bit misleading. Yet, Johnson may
technically remain the shortest investigation in history. However, whichever
impeachment deserves the dubious distinction, history has shown that short
impeachments are generally not strong impeachments.
While generally viewed as an abusive use of impeachment by most legal and
historical scholars, the Johnson impeachment has curiously been cited as a basis for the
current impeachment. Some believe that it is precedent that presidents can be impeached
over purely “political disagreements.”30 It is a chilling argument. Impeachment is not the
remedy for political disagreement. The Johnson impeachment shows that the system can
work to prevent an abusive impeachment even when the country and the Congress
despise a president. The lasting lesson is that in every time and in every Congress, there
remain leaders who can transcend their own insular political interests and defy the
demands of some voters to fulfill their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Of course, the
Constitution cannot take credit for such profiles of courage. Such courage rests within
each member but the Constitution demands that each member summon that courage when
the roll is called as it was on May 16, 1868.
B. The Nixon Inquiry
The Nixon “impeachment” is often referenced as the “gold standard” for
impeachments even though it was not an actual impeachment. President Richard Nixon
resigned before the House voted on the final articles of impeachment. Nevertheless, the
Nixon inquiry was everything that the Johnson impeachment was not. It was based on an
array of clearly defined criminal acts with a broad evidentiary foundation. That record
was supported by a number of key judicial decisions on executive privilege claims. It is a
worthy model for any presidential impeachment. However, the claim by Chairman Schiff
that the Ukrainian controversy is “beyond anything Nixon did” is wildly at odds with the

30

See generally Jonathan Turley, What’s worse than leaving Trump in office?
Impeaching him, WASH. POST (Aug. 24, 2017. 11:05 AM),
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/24/whats-worsethan-leaving-trump-in-office-impeaching-him/.

17

 historical record.31 The allegations in Nixon began with a felony crime of burglary and
swept to encompass an array of other crimes involving political slush funds, payments of
hush money, maintenance of an enemies list, directing tax audits of critics, witness
intimidation, multiple instances of perjury, and even an alleged kidnapping. Ultimately,
there were nearly 70 officials charged and four dozen of them found guilty. Nixon was
also named as an unindicted conspirator by a grand jury. The convicted officials include
former Attorney General John N. Mitchell (perjury); former Attorney General Richard
Kleindienst (contempt of court); former Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-elect
The President Jeb Stuart Magruder (conspiracy to the burglary); former Chief of Staff
H.R. Haldeman (conspiracy to the burglary, obstruction of justice, and perjury); former
counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs to Nixon John Ehlichman
(conspiracy to the burglary, obstruction of justice, and perjury); former White House
Counsel John W. Dean II (obstruction of justice); and former special counsel to the
President Charles Colson (obstruction of justice). Many of the Watergate defendants went
to jail, with some of the defendants sentenced to as long as 35 years. The claim that the
Ukrainian controversy eclipses Watergate is unhinged from history.
While the Ukrainian controversy could still establish impeachable conduct, it
undermines that effort to distort the historical record to elevate the current record. Indeed,
the comparison to the Nixon inquiry only highlights the glaring differences in the
underlying investigations, scope of impeachable conduct, and evidentiary records with
the current inquiry. It is a difference between the comprehensive and the cursory; the
proven and the presumed. In other words, it is not a comparison the House should invite
if it is serious about moving forward in a few weeks on an impeachment based primarily
on the Ukrainian controversy. The Nixon inquiry was based on the broadest and most
developed evidentiary in any impeachment. There were roughly 14 months of hearings –
not 10 weeks. There were scandalous tape recordings of Nixon and a host of criminal
pleas and prosecutions. That record included investigations in both the House and the
Senate as well as investigations by two special prosecutors, Archibald Cox and Leon
Jaworski, including grand jury material. While the inquiry proceeded along sharply
partisan lines, the vote on the proposed articles of impeachment ultimately included the
support of some Republican members who, again, showed that principle could transcend
politics in such historic moments.
Three articles were approved in the Nixon inquiry alleging obstruction of
justice, abuse of power, and defiance of committee subpoenas. Two articles of
impeachment based on usurping Congress, lying about the bombing of Cambodia, and
tax fraud, were rejected on a bipartisan basis. While the Nixon impeachment had the most
developed record and comprehensive investigation, I am not a fan of the structure used
for the articles. The Committee evaded the need for specificity in alleging crimes like
obstruction of justice while listing a variety of specific felonies after a catchall line
declaring that “the means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one

31

See Jonathan Turley, Watergate line speaks volumes about weak impeachment case,
THE HILL (Nov. 30, 2019, 10:00 AM), https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/472461watergate-line-speaks-volumes-about-weak-impeachment-case.

18

 or more of the following.” Given its gravity, impeachment should offer concrete and
specific allegations in the actual articles. This is the case in most judicial impeachments.
The impeachment began with a felony when “agents of the Committee for the Reelection of the President committed unlawful entry of the headquarters of the Democratic
National Committee in Washington, District of Columbia, for the purpose of securing
political intelligence.” The first article of impeachment reflected the depth of the record
and scope of the alleged crimes in citing Nixon’s personal involvement in the obstruction
of federal and congressional investigations. The article included a host of specific
criminal acts including lying to federal investigators, suborning perjury, and witness
tampering. The second article of impeachment also alleged an array of criminal acts that
were placed under the auspices of abuse of power. The article addressed Nixon’s rampant
misuse of the IRS, CIA, and FBI to carry out his effort to conceal the evidence and
crimes following the break-in. They included Nixon’s use of federal agencies to carry out
“covert and unlawful activities” and how he used his office to block the investigation of
federal agencies. The third article concerned defiance of Congress stemming from his
refusal to turn over material to Congress.
These articles were never subjected to a vote of the full House. In my view, they
were flawed in their language and structure. As noted earlier, there was a lack of
specificity on the alleged acts due to the use of catch-all lists of alleged offenses.
However, my greatest concern rests with Article 3. That article stated:
“In refusing to produce these papers and things Richard M. Nixon,
substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the
inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful
subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself
functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of
impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.”
This Article has been cited as precedent for impeaching a president whenever witnesses
or documents are refused in an impeachment investigation, even under claims of
executive immunities or privileges. The position of Chairman Peter Rodino was that
Congress had the sole authority to decide what material had to be produced in such an
investigation. That position would seem to do precisely what the article accused Nixon of
doing: “assuming to [itself] functions and judgments” necessary for the Executive
Branch. There is a third branch that is designated to resolve conflicts between the two
political branches. In recognition of this responsibility, the Judiciary ruled on the Nixon
disputes. In so doing, the Supreme Court found executive privilege claims are legitimate
grounds to raise in disputes with Congress but ruled such claims can be set aside in the
balancing of interests with Congress. What a president cannot do is ignore a final judicial
order on such witnesses or evidence.
Putting aside my qualms with the drafting of the articles, the Nixon impeachment
remains well-supported and well-based. He would have been likely impeached and
removed, though I am not confident all of the articles would have been approved. I have
particular reservations over the third article and its implications for presidents seeking
judicial review. However, the Nixon inquiry had a foundation that included an array of
criminal acts and a record that ultimately reached hundreds of thousands of pages. In the

19

 end, Nixon was clearly guilty of directing a comprehensive conspiracy that involved
slush funds, enemy lists, witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, and a host of other
crimes. The breathtaking scope of the underlying criminality still shocks the conscience.
The current controversy does not, as claimed, exceed the misconduct of Nixon, but that is
not the test. Hopefully, we will not face another president responsible for this range of
illegal conduct. Yet, that does not mean that other presidents are not guilty of
impeachable conduct even if it does not rise to a Nixonian level. In other words, there is
no need to out-Nixon Nixon. Impeachable will do. The question is whether the current
allegation qualifies as impeachable, not uber-impeachable.
C. The Clinton Impeachment.
The third and final impeachment is of course the Clinton impeachment. That
hearing involved 19 academics and, despite the rancor of the times, a remarkably
substantive and civil intellectual exchange on the underlying issues. These are issues
upon which reasonable people can disagree and the hearing remains a widely cited source
on the historical and legal foundations for the impeachment standard. Like Johnson’s
impeachment, the Clinton impeachment rested on a narrow alleged crime: perjury. The
underlying question for that hearing is well suited for today’s analysis. We focused on
whether a president could be impeached for lying under oath in a federal investigation
run by an independent counsel. There was not a debate over whether Clinton lied under
oath. Indeed, a federal court later confirmed that Clinton had committed perjury even
though he was never charged. Rather, the issue was whether some felonies do not “rise to
the level of impeachment” and, in that case, the alleged perjury and lying to federal
investigators concerning an affair with White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
My position in the Clinton impeachment hearing was simple and remains
unchanged. Perjury is an impeachable offense. Period. It does not matter what the subject
happened to be. The President heads the Executive Branch and is duty bound to enforce
federal law including the perjury laws. Thousands of citizens have been sentenced to jail
for the same act committed by President Clinton. He could refuse to answer the question
and face the consequences, or he could tell the truth. What he could not do is lie and
assume he had license to commit a crime that his own Administration was prosecuting
others for. Emerging from that hearing was an “executive function” theory limiting “high
crimes and misdemeanors” to misconduct related to the office of the President or misuse
of official power. 32 While supporters of the executive function theory recognized that
this theory was not absolute and that some private conduct can be impeachable, it was
argued that Clinton's conduct was personal and outside the realm of “other high crimes
and misdemeanors.”33 This theory has been criticized in other articles. This threshold
32

Jonathan Turley, The "Executive Function" Theory, the Hamilton Affair and Other
Constitutional Mythologies, 77 N.C. L. REV. 1791 (1999).
33

Floor Debate, Clinton Impeachments, December 18, 1998 (“Perjury on a private
matter, perjury regarding sex, is not a great and dangerous offense against the nation. It is
not an abuse of uniquely presidential power. It does not threaten our form of government.
It is not an impeachable offense.”) (statement Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D., N.Y.).

20

 argument, however, would appear again in the Senate trial. Notably, the defenders of the
President argued that the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors” should be treated
differently for judicial, as opposed to presidential, officers. This argument was compelled
by the fact that the Senate had previously removed Judge Claiborne for perjury before a
grand jury and removed Judge Hastings, who had actually been acquitted on perjury
charges by a court. I have previously written against this executive function theory of
impeachable offenses.34
The House Judiciary Committee delivered four articles of impeachment on a
straight partisan vote. Article One alleged perjury before the federal grand jury. Article
Two alleged perjury in a sexual harassment case. Article Three alleged obstruction of
justice through witness tampering. Article Four alleged perjury in the President's answers
to Congress. On December 19, 1998, the House approved two of the four articles of
impeachment: perjury before the grand jury and obstruction of justice. In both votes,
although Republicans and Democrats crossed party lines, the final vote remained largely
partisan. The impeachment was technically initiated on October 8, 1998 and the articles
approved on December 19, 1998.
The Senate trial of President Clinton began on January 7, 1999, with Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist taking the oath. The rule adopted by the Senate created immediate
problems for the House managers. The rules specifically required the House managers to
prove their case for witnesses and imposed a witness-by-witness Senate vote on the
House managers. Because the Independent Counsel had supplied an extensive record
with testimony from key witnesses, the need to call witnesses like the Nixon hearings
was greatly reduced. For that reason, the House moved quickly to the submission of
articles of impeachment after the hearing of experts. However, the Senate only approved
three witnesses, described by House manager and Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry
Hyde as “a pitiful three.” It proved fateful. One of the witnesses not called was Lewinsky
herself. Years later, Lewinsky revealed (as she might have if called as a witness) that she
was told to lie about the relationship by close associates of President Clinton. In 2018,
Lewinsky stated Clinton encouraged her to lie to the independent counsel, an allegation
raising the possibility of a variety of crimes as well as supporting the articles of
impeachment.35 The disclosure many years after the trial is a cautionary tale for future
impeachments, as the denial of key witnesses from the Senate trial can prove decisive.
34

Jonathan Turley, The "Executive Function" Theory, the Hamilton Affair and Other
Constitutional Mythologies, 77 N.C. L. REV. 1791 (1999).
35

Jonathan Turley, Lewinsky interview renews questions of Clinton crimes, THE HILL
(Nov. 26, 2018, 12:00 PM), https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/418237-lewinskyinterview-renews-questions-of-clinton-crimes. Lewinsky said on the A&E documentary
series "The Clinton Affair" that Clinton phoned her at 2:30 a.m. one morning in late 1997
to tell her she was on witness list for Jones' civil suit against him. She said she was
“petrified” and that “Bill helped me lock myself back from that and he said I could
probably sign an affidavit to get out of it.” While he did not directly tell her to lie, she
noted he did not tell her to tell the truth and that the conversation was about signing an
affidavit “to get out of it.” Lewinsky went into details on how Clinton arranged for
Lewinsky to meet with his close adviser and attorney Vernon Jordan. Jordan then

21

 The Clinton impeachment was narrow but based on underlying criminal conduct largely
investigated by an Independent Counsel. The allegation of perjury of a sitting president
was supported by a long investigation and extensive record. Indeed, the perjury by
Clinton was clear and acknowledged even by some of his supporters. The flaws in the
Clinton impeachment emerged from the highly restrictive and outcome determinative
rules imposed by the Senate. In comparison, the Trump impeachment inquiry has raised a
number of criminal acts but each of those alleged crimes are undermined by legal and
evidentiary deficiencies. As discussed below, the strongest claim is for a non-criminal
abuse of power if a quid pro quo can be established on the record. That deficiency should
be addressed before any articles are reported to the floor of the House.
D. Summary
A comparison of the current impeachment inquiry with the three prior presidential
inquiries puts a few facts into sharp relief. First, this is a case without a clear criminal act
and would be the first such case in history if the House proceeds without further
evidence. In all three impeachment inquiries, the commission of criminal acts by
Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton were clear and established. With Johnson, the House
effectively created a trapdoor crime and Johnson knowingly jumped through it. The
problem was that the law—the Tenure in Office Act—was presumptively
unconstitutional and the impeachment was narrowly built around that dubious criminal
act. With Nixon, there were a host of alleged criminal acts and dozens of officials who
would be convicted of felonies. With Clinton, there was an act of perjury that even his
supporters acknowledged was a felony, leaving them to argue that some felonies “do not
rise to the level” of an impeachment. Despite clear and established allegations of criminal
acts committed by the president, narrow impeachments like Johnson and Clinton have
fared badly. As will be discussed further below, the recently suggested criminal acts
related to the Ukrainian controversy are worse off, being highly questionable from a legal
standpoint and far from established from an evidentiary standpoint.
Second, the abbreviated period of investigation into this controversy is both
problematic and puzzling. Although the Johnson impeachment progressed quickly after
the firing of the Secretary of War, that controversy had been building for over a year and
was actually the fourth attempted impeachment. Moreover, Johnson fell into the trap laid
a year before in the Tenure of Office Act. The formal termination was the event that
triggered the statutory language of the act and thus there was no dispute as to the critical
facts. We have never seen a controversy arise for the first time and move to an
arranged for Lewinsky to be represented by Frank Carter, who drafted a false affidavit
denying any affair. Lewinsky, who had virtually no work history or relevant background,
was offered a job with Revlon, where Jordan was a powerful member of the board of
directors. Lewinsky said, “Frank Carter explained to me that if I signed an affidavit
denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I would not
have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case.” Those details – including Clinton’s
encouragement for her to sign the affidavit and contracts after she became a witness –
were never shared at the Senate trial.

22

 impeachment in such a short period. Nixon and Clinton developed over many months of
investigation and a wide array of witness testimony and grand jury proceedings. In the
current matter, much remains unknown in terms of key witnesses and underlying
documents. There is no explanation why the matter must be completed by December.
After two years of endless talk of impeachable and criminal acts, little movement
occurred toward an impeachment. Suddenly the House appears adamant that this
impeachment must be completed by the end of December. To be blunt, if the schedule is
being accelerated by the approach of the Iowa caucuses, it would be both an artificial and
inimical element to introduce into the process. This is not the first impeachment
occurring during a political season. In the Johnson impeachment, the vote on the articles
was interrupted by the need for some Senators to go to the Republican National
Convention. The bifurcated vote occurred in May 1868 and the election was held just six
months later.
Finally, the difference in the record is striking. Again, Johnson’s impeachment
must be set aside as an outlier since it was based on a manufactured trap-door crime. Yet,
even with Johnson, there was over a year of investigations and proceedings related to his
alleged usurpation and defiance of the federal law. The Ukrainian matter is largely built
around a handful of witnesses and a schedule that reportedly set the matter for a vote
within weeks of the underlying presidential act. Such a wafer-thin record only magnifies
the problems already present in a narrowly constructed impeachment. The question for
the House remains whether it is seeking simply to secure an impeachment or actually
trying to build a case for removal. If it is the latter, this is not the schedule or the process
needed to build a viable case. The House should not assume that the Republican control
of the Senate makes any serious effort at impeachment impractical or naïve. All four
impeachment inquiries have occurred during rabid political periods. However, politicians
can on occasion rise to the moment and chose principle over politics. Indeed, in the
Johnson trial, senators knowingly sacrificed their careers to fulfill their constitutional
oaths. If the House wants to make a serious effort at impeachment, it should focus on
building the record to raise these allegations to the level of impeachable offenses and
leave to the Senate the question of whether members will themselves rise to the moment
that follows.
IV. THE CURRENT THEORIES OF IMPEACHABLE CONDUCT AGAINST
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
While all three acts in the impeachment standard refer to criminal acts in modern
parlance, it is clear that “high crimes and misdemeanors” can encompass non-criminal
conduct. It is also true that Congress has always looked to the criminal code in the
fashioning of articles of impeachment. The reason is obvious. Criminal allegations not
only represent the most serious forms of conduct under our laws, but they also offer an
objective source for measuring and proving such conduct. We have never had a
presidential impeachment proceed solely or primarily on an abuse of power allegation,
though such allegations have been raised in the context of violations of federal or
criminal law. Perhaps for that reason, there has been a recent shift away from a pure
abuse of power allegation toward direct allegations of criminal conduct. That shift,

23

 however, has taken the impeachment process far outside of the relevant definitions and
case law on these crimes. It is to those allegations that I would now like to turn.
At the outset, however, two threshold issues are worth noting. First, this hearing is
being held before any specific articles have been proposed. During the Clinton
impeachment hearing, we were given a clear idea of the expected articles of impeachment
and far greater time to prepare analysis of those allegations. The House leadership has
repeatedly indicated that they are proceeding on the Ukrainian controversy and not the
various alleged violations or crimes alleged during the Russian investigation. Recently,
however, Chairman Schiff indicated that there might be additional allegations raised
while continuing to reference the end of December as the working date for an
impeachment vote. Thus, we are being asked to offer a sincere analysis on the grounds
for impeachment while being left in the dark. My testimony is based on the public
statements regarding the Ukrainian matter, which contain references to four alleged
crimes and, most recently, a possible compromise proposal for censure.
Second, the crimes discussed below were recently raised as part of the House
Intelligence Committee hearings as alternatives to the initial framework as an abuse of
power. There may be a desire to refashion these facts into crimes with higher resonance
with voters, such as bribery. In any case, Chairman Schiff and committee members began
to specifically ask witnesses about elements that were pulled from criminal cases. When
some of us noted that courts have rejected these broader interpretations or that there are
missing elements for these crimes, advocates immediately shifted to a position that it
really does not matter because “this is an impeachment.” This allows members to claim
criminal acts while dismissing the need to actually support such allegations. If that were
the case, members could simply claim any crime from treason to genocide. While
impeachment does encompass non-crimes, including abuse of power, past impeachments
have largely been structured around criminal definitions. The reason is simple and
obvious. The impeachment standard was designed to be a high bar and felonies often
were treated as inherently grave and serious. Legal definitions and case law also offer an
objective and reliable point of reference for judging the conduct of judicial and executive
officers. It is unfair to claim there is a clear case of a crime like bribery and
simultaneously dismiss any need to substantiate such a claim under the controlling
definitions and meaning of that crime. After all, the common mantra that “no one is
above the law” is a reference to the law applied to all citizens, even presidents. If the
House does not have the evidence to support a claim of a criminal act, it should either
develop such evidence or abandon the claim. As noted below, abandoning such claims
would still leave abuse of power as a viable ground for impeachment. It just must be
proven.
A. Bribery
While the House Intelligence Committee hearings began with references to
“abuse of power” in the imposition of a quid pro quo with Ukraine, it ended with
repeated references to the elements of bribery. After hearing only two witnesses, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared witnesses offered “devastating” evidence that
“corroborated” bribery. This view was developed further by House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Adam Schiff who repeatedly returned to the definition of bribery

24

 while adding the caveat that, even if this did not meet the legal definition of bribery, it
might meet a prior definition under an uncharacteristically originalist view: “As the
founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much
broader. It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you're offering official
acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation's interest.”
The premise of the bribery allegations is that President Trump was soliciting a
bribe from Ukraine when he withheld either a visit at the White House or military aid in
order to secure investigations into the 2016 election meddling and the Hunter Biden
contract by Ukraine. On its face, the bribery theory is undermined by the fact that Trump
released the aid without the alleged pre-conditions. However, the legal flaws in this
theory are more significant than such factual conflicts. As I have previously written,36
this record does not support a bribery charge in either century. Before we address this
bribery theory, it is important to note that any criminal allegation in an impeachment
must be sufficiently clear and recognized to serve two purposes. First, it must put
presidents on notice of where a line exists in the range of permissible comments or
conduct in office. Second, it must be sufficiently clear to assure the public that an
impeachment is not simply an exercise of partisan creativity in rationalizing a removal of
a president. Neither of these purposes was satisfied in the Johnson impeachment where
the crime was manufactured by Congress. This is why past impeachments focused on
establishing criminal acts with reference to the criminal code and controlling case law.
Moreover, when alleging bribery, it is the modern definition that is the most critical since
presidents (and voters) expect clarity in the standards applied to presidential conduct.
Rather than founding these allegations on clear and recognized definitions, the House has
advanced a capacious and novel view of bribery to fit the limited facts. If impeachment is
reduced to a test of creative redefinitions of crimes, no president will be confident in their
ability to operate without the threat of removal. Finally, as noted earlier, dismissing the
need to establish criminal conduct by arguing an act is “close enough for impeachment,”
is a transparent and opportunistic spin. This is not improvisational jazz. “Close enough”
is not nearly enough for a credible case of impeachment.
1. The Eighteenth-Century Case For Bribery
The position of Chairman Schiff is that the House can rely on a broader originalist
understanding of bribery that “connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where
you're offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation's
interest.” The statement reflects a misunderstanding of early sources. Indeed, this
interpretation reverses the import of early references to “violations of public trust.”
Bribery was cited as an example of a violation of public trust. It was not defined as any
violation of public trust. It is akin to defining murder as any violence offense because it is
listed among violent offenses. Colonial laws often drew from English sources which
barred the “taking of Bribes, Gifts, or any unlawful Fee or Reward, by Judges, Justices of
36

Jonathan Turley, Adam Schiff’s Capacious Definition of Bribery Was Tried in 1787,
WALL ST. J. (Nov. 28, 2019, 1:49 PM), https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-schiffscapacious-definition-of-bribery-was-tried-in-1787-11574966979.

25

 the Peace, or any other Officers either magisterial or ministerial.”37 Not surprisingly,
these early laws categorized bribery as one of the crimes that constituted a violation of
public trust. The categorization was important because such crimes could bar an official
from holding public office. Thus, South Carolina's colonial law listed bribery as
examples of acts barring service “[f]or the avoiding of corruption which may hereafter
happen to be in the officers and ministers of those courts, places, or rooms wherein there
is requisite to be had the true administration of justice or services of trust ....”38
The expansion of bribery in earlier American law did not stem from the changing
of the definition as much as it did the scope of the crime. Bribery laws were originally
directed at judicial, not executive officers, and the receiving as opposed to the giving of
bribes. These common law definitions barred judges from receiving “any undue reward
to influence his behavior in office.”39 The scope of such early laws was not broad but
quite narrow.40 Indeed, the narrow definition of bribery was cited as a reason for the
English adoption of “high crimes and misdemeanors” which would allow for a broad
base for impeachments. Story noted:
“In examining the parliamentary history of impeachments, it will be
found, that many offences, not easily definable by law, and many of a
purely political character, have been deemed high crimes and
misdemeanours worthy of this extraordinary remedy. Thus, lord
chancellors, and judges, and other magistrates, have not only been
impeached for bribery, and acting grossly contrary to the duties of their
office; but for misleading their sovereign by unconstitutional opinions, and
for attempts to subvert the fundamental laws, and introduce arbitrary
power.”41
Thus, faced with the narrow meaning of bribery, the English augmented the impeachment
standard with a separate broader offense.42
37

ACTS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PROVINCE OF NEW JERSEY, ch. XLI 23
(Samuel Allinson ed., Burlington, Isaac Collins 1776).
38

THE PUBLIC LAWS OF THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA FROM ITS ESTABLISHMENT AS A
BRITISH PROVINCE DOWN TO THE YEAR 1790, INCLUSIVE 14648 (John F. Grimke ed.,
Philadelphia, R. Aitken 1790).
39

IV WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAW OF ENGLAND: IN FOUR BOOKS
129 (1765-69).
40

CONG. RESEARCH SERV., IMPEACHMENT AND THE CONSTITUTION, 43 (2019).

41

II JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES § 798
(1833).
42

Indeed, Chairman Schiff may be confusing the broader treatment given extortion in
early laws, not bribery. See generally James Lindgren, The Elusive Distinction Between
Bribery and Extortion: From the Common Law to the Hobbs Act, 35 UCLA L. REV. 815,
875 (1988) (“Since bribery law remained undeveloped for so long, another crime was
needed to fill the gap-especially against corruption by nonjudicial officers.”).

26

 This view of bribery was also born out in the Constitutional Convention. As noted
earlier, the Framers were familiar with the impeachment of Warren Hastings which was
pending trial at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. The Hastings case reflected
the broad impeachment standard and fluid interpretations applied in English cases.
George Mason wanted to see this broader approach taken in the United States. Mason
specifically objected to the use solely of “treason” and “bribery” because those terms
were too narrow—the very opposite of the premise of Chairman Schiff’s remarks. Mason
ultimately failed in his effort to adopt a tertiary standard with broader meaning to
encompass acts deemed as “subvert[ing] the Constitution.” However, both Mason and
Madison were in agreement on the implied meaning of bribery as a narrow, not broad
crime. Likewise, Gouverneur Morris agreed, raising bribery as a central threat that might
be deterred through the threat of impeachment:
“Our Executive was not like a Magistrate having a life interest, much less
like one having a hereditary interest in his office. He may be bribed by
a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to
expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay
without being able to guard agst it by displacing him. One would think the
King of England well secured agst bribery. He has as it were a fee simple
in the whole Kingdom. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.”43
Bribery, as used here, did not indicate some broad definition of, but a classic payment of
money. Louis XIV bribed Charles II to sign the secret Treaty of Dover of 1670 with the
payment of a massive pension and other benefits kept secret from the English people. In
return, Charles II not only agreed to convert to Catholicism, but to join France in a
wartime alliance against the Dutch.44
Under the common law definition, bribery remains relatively narrow and
consistently defined among the states. “The core of the concept of a bribe is an
inducement improperly influencing the performance of a public function meant to be
gratuitously exercised.”45 The definition does not lend itself to the current controversy.
President Trump can argue military and other aid is often used to influence other
countries in taking domestic or international actions. It might be a vote in the United
Nations or an anti-corruption investigation within a nation. Aid is not assumed to be
“gratuitously exercised” but rather it is used as part of foreign policy discussions and
international relations. Moreover, discussing visits to the White House is hardly the stuff
of bribery under any of these common law sources. Ambassador Sondland testified that
the President expressly denied there was a quid pro quo and that he was never told of
such preconditions. However, he also testified that he came to believe there was a quid
pro quo, not for military aid, but rather for the visit to the White House: “Was there a
‘quid pro quo? With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting,
43

2 THE RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787 68-69 (Max Farrand ed., 1937).

44

GEORGE CLARK, THE LATER STUARTS (1660-1714) 86-87, 130 (2d ed. 1956).

45

J. NOONAN, BRIBES xi (1984).

27

 the answer is yes.” Such visits are routinely used as bargaining chips and not
“gratuitously exercised.” As for the military aid, the withholding of the aid is difficult to
fit into any common law definition of a bribe, particularly when it was ultimately
provided without the satisfaction of the alleged pre-conditions. Early bribery laws did not
even apply to executive officials and actual gifts were regularly given. Indeed, the
Framers moved to stop such gifts separately through provisions like the Emoluments
Clause. They also applied bribery to executive officials. Once again Morris’ example is
illustrative. The payment was a direct payment to Charles II of personal wealth and even
a young French mistress.
The narrow discussion of bribery by the Framers stands in stark contrast to an
allegedly originalist interpretation that would change the meaning of bribery to include
broader notions of acts against the public trust. This is why bribery allegations in past
impeachments, particularly judicial impeachments, focused on contemporary
understandings of that crime. To that question, I would like to now turn.
2. The Twenty-First Century Case For Bribery
Early American bribery followed elements of the British and common law
approach to bribery. In 1789, Congress passed the first federal criminal statute
prohibiting bribing a customs official46 and one year later Congress passed "An Act for
the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States" prohibiting the bribery of a
federal judge.47 Various public corruption and bribery provisions are currently on the
books, but the standard provision is found in 18 U.S.C. § 201 which allows for
prosecution when “[a] public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or
indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept
anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for … being
influenced in the performance of any official act.” While seemingly sweeping in its
scope, the definition contains narrowing elements on the definition of what constitutes “a
thing of value,” an “official act,” and “corrupt intent.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly narrowed the scope of the statutory definition
of bribery, including distinctions with direct relevance to the current controversy. In
McDonnell v. United States,48 the Court overturned the conviction of former Virginia
governor Robert McDonnell. McDonnell and his wife were prosecuted for bribery under
the Hobbs Act, applying the same elements as found in Section 201(a)(3). They were
accused of accepting an array of loans, gifts, and other benefits from a businessman in
return for McDonnell facilitating key meetings, hosting events, and contacting
government officials on behalf of the businessman who ran a company called Star
Scientific. The benefits exceeded $175,000 and the alleged official acts were completed.
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction. As explained
by Chief Justice Roberts:
46

Act of July 31, 1789, ch. 5, 34-35, 1 Stat. 29.

47

Act of April 30, 1790. ch. 9, 1, 1 Stat. 112.

48

McDonnell v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2355, 2372 (2016).

28

 “[O]ur concern is not with tawdry tales of Ferraris, Rolexes, and ball
gowns. It is instead with the broader legal implications of the
Government’s boundless intrepretation of the federal bribery statute. A
more limited interpretation of the term ‘official act’ leaves ample room for
prosecuting corruption, while comporting with the text of the statute and
the precedent of this Court.”49
The opinion is rife with references that have a direct bearing on the current controversy.
This includes the dismissal of meetings as insufficient acts. It also included the
allegations that “recommending that senior government officials in the [Governor's
Office] meet with Star Scientific executives to discuss ways that the company's products
could lower healthcare costs.” While the meeting and contacts discussed by Ambassador
Sondland as a quid pro quo are not entirely the same, the Court refused to recognize that
“nearly anything a public official does—from arranging a meeting to inviting a guest to
an event—counts as a quo.”50 The Court also explained why such “boundless
interpretations” are inimical to constitutional rights because they deny citizens the notice
of what acts are presumptively criminal: “[U]nder the Government's interpretation, the
term 'official act' is not defined 'with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can
understand what conduct is prohibited,' or 'in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary
and discriminatory enforcement.’”51 That is precisely the danger raised earlier in using
novel or creative interpretations of crimes like bribery to impeach a president. Such
improvisational impeachment grounds deny presidents notice and deny the system
predictability in the relations between the branches.
The limited statements from the House on the bribery theory for impeachment
track an honest services fraud narrative. These have tended to be some of the most
controversial fraud and bribery cases when brought against public officials. These cases
are especially difficult when the alleged act was never taken by the public official.
McDonnell resulted in the reversal of a number of convictions or dismissal of criminal
counts against former public officials. One such case was United States v. Silver
involving the prosecution of the former Speaker of the New York Assembly. Silver was
accused of an array of bribes and kickbacks in the form of referral fees from law firms.
He was convicted on all seven counts and sentenced to twelve years of imprisonment. It
was overturned because of the same vagueness that undermined the conviction in
McDonnell. The Second Circuit ruled the “overbroad” theory of
prosecution “encompassed any action taken or to be taken under color of official
authority.”52 Likewise, the Third Circuit reversed conviction on a variety of corruption

49

Id. at 2375.

50

Id. at 2372.

51

Id. at 2373.

52

United States v. Silver, 864 F.3d 102, 113 (2d Cir. 2017).

29

 counts in Fattah v. United States.53 Former Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Penn.) was convicted
on all twenty-two counts of corruption based on an honest services prosecution. The case
also involved a variety of alleged “official acts” including the arranging of meetings with
the U.S. Trade Representative. The Third Circuit ruled out the use of acts as an “official
act.” As for the remanded remainder, the court noted it might be possible to use other
acts, such as lobbying for an appointment of an ambassador, to make out the charge but
stated that “[d]etermining, for example, just how forceful a strongly worded letter of
recommendation must be before it becomes impermissible ‘pressure or advice’ is a factintensive inquiry that falls within the domain of a properly instructed jury.”54 Faced with
the post-McDonnell reversal and restrictive remand instructions, the Justice Department
elected not to retry Fattah.55 Such a fact-intensive inquiry would be far more problematic
in the context of a conversation between two heads of state where policy and political
issues are often intermixed.56
The same result occurred in the post-McDonnell appeal by former Rep. William
Jefferson. Jefferson was convicted of soliciting and receiving payments from various
sources in return for his assistance. This included shares in a telecommunications
company and the case became a classic corruption scandal when $90,000 in cash was
found in Jefferson’s freezer. The money was allegedly meant as a bribe for the Nigerian
Vice President to secure assistance in his business endeavors. Jefferson was convicted on
eleven counts and the conviction was upheld on ten of eleven of those counts. McDonnell
was then handed down. The federal court agreed that the case imposed more limited
definitions and instructions for bribery.57 The instruction defining the element of “official
acts” is notable given recent statements in the House hearings: “An act may be official
even if it was not taken pursuant to responsibilities explicitly assigned by law. Rather,
official acts include those activities that have been clearly established by settled practice
as part [of] a public official's position.” The court agreed that such definitions are, as
noted in McDonnell, unbounded. The court added:
53

United States v. Fattah, 902 F.3d 197, 240 (3d Cir. 2018) ("in accordance
with McDonnell, that Fattah's arranging a meeting between Vederman and the U.S. Trade
Representative was not itself an official act. Because the jury may have convicted Fattah
for conduct that is not unlawful, we cannot conclude that the error in the jury instruction
was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.").
54

Id. at 241.

55

Griffin Connolly, DOJ Won’t Re-Try Ex-Rep Fatah, ROLL CALL (May 2, 2019),
https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/doj-wont-retry-ex-rep-fattah-overturnedconvictions-wont-reduce-prison-time. Rep. Fatah’s sentencing on other counts however
left a ten-year sentence in place.
56

The convictions of former New York Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son for
bribery or corruption were also vacated by Second Circuit over the definition of “official
act.” United States v. Skelos, 707 Fed. Appx. 733, 733-36 (2d Cir. 2017). They were later
retried and convicted.
57

United States v. Jefferson, 289 F. Supp. 3d. 717, 721 (E.D. Va. 2017).

30

 “the jury instructions in Jefferson's case did not explain that to qualify as
an official act ‘the public official must make a decision or take an action
on that question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, or agree to
do so.’ The jury charge in Jefferson's case did not require the jury to
consider whether Jefferson could actually make a decision on a pending
matter, nor did the instructions clarify that Jefferson's actions could
include “using [an] official position to exert pressure on another official to
perform an 'official act,' or to advise another official, knowing or intending
that such advice will form the basis for an 'official act' by another
official.” Without these instructions, the jury could have believed that any
action Jefferson took to assist iGate or other businesses was an official act,
even if those acts included the innocent conduct of attending a meeting,
calling an official, or expressing support for a project.”58
Accordingly, the court dismissed seven of ten of the counts, and Jefferson was released
from prison.59
McDonnell also shaped the corruption case against Sen. Robert Menendez (DN.J.) who was charged with receiving a variety of gifts and benefits in exchange for his
intervention on behalf of a wealthy businessman donor. Both Sen. Menendez and Dr.
Salomon Melgen were charged in an eighteen-count indictment for bribery and honest
services fraud in 2015.60 The jury was given the more restrictive post-McDonnell
definition and proceeded to deadlock on the charges, leading to a mistrial. As in the other
cases, the Justice Department opted to dismiss the case—a decision attributed by experts
to the view that McDonnell “significantly raised the bar for prosecutors who try to pursue
corruption cases against elected officials.”61
Applying McDonnell and other cases to the current controversy undermines the bribery
claims being raised. The Court noted that an “official act”
“is a decision or action on a ‘question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or
controversy.’ The ‘question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or
controversy’ must involve a formal exercise of governmental power that is
similar in nature to a lawsuit before a court, a determination before an
agency, or a hearing before a committee. It must also be something

58

Id. at 735 (internal citations omitted).

59

Rachel Weiner, Judge lets former Louisiana congressman William Jefferson out of
prison, WASH. POST (Oct. 5, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/publicsafety/judge-lets-former-louisiana-congressman-william-jefferson-out-ofprison/2017/10/05/8b53619e-aa0b-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html.
60

United States v. Menendez, 132 F. Supp. 3d 635 (D.N.J. 2015).

61

Nick Corasaniti, Justice Department Dismisses Corruption Case Against Menendez,
N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 31, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/justicedepartment-moves-to-dismiss-corruption-case-against-menendez.html.

31

 specific and focused that is ‘pending’ or ‘may by law be brought’ before a
public official.”
The discussion of a visit to the White House is facially inadequate for this task, as it is
not a formal exercise of governmental power. However, withholding of military aid
certainly does smack of a “determination before an agency.” Yet, that “quo” breaks down
on closer scrutiny, even before getting to the question of a “corrupt intent.” Consider the
specific act in this case. As the Ukrainians knew, Congress appropriated the $391 million
in military aid for Ukraine and the money was in the process of being apportioned.
Witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee stated that it was not uncommon to
have delays in such apportionment or for an Administration to hold back money for a
period longer than the 55 days involved in these circumstances. Acting Chief of Staff
Mike Mulvaney stated that the White House understood it was required to release the
money by a date certain absent a lawful reason barring apportionment. That day was the
end of September for the White House. Under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (ICA),
reserving the funds requires notice to Congress. This process has always been marked by
administrative and diplomatic delays. As the witnesses indicated, it is not always clear
why aid is delayed. Arguably, by the middle of October, the apportionment of the aid was
effectively guaranteed. It is not contested that the Administration could delay the
apportionment to resolve concerns over how the funds would be effectively used or
apportioned. The White House had until the end of the fiscal year on September 30 to
obligate the funds. On September 11, the funds were released. By September 30, all but
$35 million in the funds were obligated. However, on September 27, President Trump
signed a spending bill that averted a government shutdown and extended current funding,
specifically providing another year to send funds to Ukraine.62
It is certainly fair to question the non-budgetary reasons for the delay in the
release of the funds. Yet, the White House was largely locked into the statutory and
regulatory process for obligating the funds by the end of September. Even if the President
sought to mislead the Ukrainians on his ability to deny the funding, there is no evidence
of such a direct statement in the record. Indeed, Ambassador Taylor testified that he
believed the Ukrainians first raised their concerns over a pre-condition on August 31 with
the publication of the Politico article on the withholding of the funds. The aid was
released roughly ten days later, and no conditions were actually met. The question
remains what the “official act” was for this theory given the deadline for aid release.
Indeed, had a challenge been filed over the delay before the end of September, it would
have most certainly been dismissed by a federal court as premature, if not frivolous.
Even if the “official act” were clear, any bribery case would collapse on the
current lack of evidence of a corrupt intent. In the transcript of the call, President Trump
62

Caitlin Emma, Trump signs stopgap spending bill to avoid a shutdown, POLITICO (Sept.
27, 2019, 6:26 PM), https://www.politico.com/news/2019/09/27/trump-signs-spendingbill-007275; Joe Gould, Senate passes Ukraine aid extension, averts government
shutdown for now, DEFENSENEWS (Sept. 26, 2019),
https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/09/26/senate-passes-ukraine-aid-extensionstopgap-spending-bill/.

32

 pushes President Zelensky for two investigations. First, he raises his ongoing concerns
over Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election:
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been
through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out
what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say
Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The
server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the
whole situation … I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the
same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your
people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw
yesterday, that whole nonsense. It ended with a very poor performance by
a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a
lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important
that you do it if that’s possible.”63
Many have legitimately criticized the President for his fixation on Crowdstrike and his
flawed understanding of that company’s role and Ukrainian ties. However, asking for an
investigation into election interference in 2016 does not show a corrupt intent. U.S.
Attorney John Durham is reportedly looking into the origins of the FBI investigation
under the Obama Administration. That investigation necessarily includes the use of
information from Ukrainian figures in the Steele dossier. Witnesses like Nellie Ohr
referenced Ukrainian sources in the investigation paid for by the Democratic National
Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton. While one can reasonably question the
significance of such involvement (and it is certainly not on the scale of the Russian
intervention into the election), it is part of an official investigation by the Justice
Department. Trump may indeed be wildly off base in his concerns about Ukrainian
efforts to influence the election. However, even if these views are clueless, they are not
corrupt. The request does not ask for a particular finding but cooperation with the Justice
Department and an investigation into Ukrainian conduct. Even if the findings were to
support Trump’s view (and there is no guarantee that would be case), there is no reason
to expect such findings within the remaining time before the election. Likewise, the
release of unspecified findings from an official investigation at some unspecified date are
not a “thing of value” under any reasonable definition of the statute.
The references to investigating possible 2016 election interference cannot be the
basis for a credible claim of bribery or other crimes, at least on the current record. That,
however, was not the only request. After President Zelensky raised the fact that his aides
had spoken with Trump’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, and stated his hope to speak with him
directly, President Trump responded:

63

Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine on July 25, 2019 (Sept.
24, 2019) (available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf).

33

 “Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he
was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about
that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some
very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was
the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call
you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very
much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could
speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United
States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in
the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other
thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the
prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you
can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around
bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. It
sounds horrible to me.”64
This is clearly the most serious problem with the call. In my view, the references to Biden
and his son were highly inappropriate and should not have been part of the call. That does
not, however, make this a plausible case for bribery. Trump does not state a quid pro quo
in the call. He is using his influence to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate both of these
matters and to cooperate with the Justice Department. After President Zelensky voiced a
criticism of the prior U.S. ambassador, President Trump responded:
“Well, she’s going to go through some things. I will have Mr. Giuliani
give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and
we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out. I heard the
prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so
good luck with everything. Your economy is going to get better and better
I predict. You have a lot of assets. It’s a great country. I have many
Ukrainian friends, they’re incredible people.”65
Again, the issue is not whether these comments are correct, but whether they are corrupt.
In my view, there is no case law that would support a claim of corrupt intent in such
comments to support a bribery charge. There is no question that an investigation of the
Bidens would help President Trump politically. However, if President Trump honestly
believed that there was a corrupt arrangement with Hunter Biden that was not fully
investigated by the Obama Administration, the request for an investigation is not corrupt,
notwithstanding its inappropriateness. The Hunter Biden contract has been widely
criticized as raw influence peddling. I have joined in that criticism. For many years, I
have written about the common practice of companies and lobbyists attempting to curry
favor with executive branch officials and members of Congress by giving windfall
contracts or jobs to their children. This is a classic example of that corrupt practice.
Indeed, the glaring appearance of a conflict was reportedly raised by George Kent, the
64

Id. at 3-4.

65

Id. at 4.

34

 Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs during the Obama
Administration.
The reference to the Bidens also lacks the same element of a promised act on the
part of President Trump. There is no satisfaction of a decision or action on the part of
President Trump or an agreement to make such a decision or action. There is a
presumption by critics that this exists, but the presumption is no substitute for proof. The
current lack of proof is another reason why the abbreviated investigation into this matter
is so damaging to the case for impeachment. In the prior bribery charges in McDonnell
and later cases, benefits were actually exchanged but the courts still rejected the premise
that the meetings and assistance were official acts committed with a corrupt intent.
Finally, the “boundless interpretations of the bribery statutes” rejected in McDonnell
pale in comparison to the effort to twist these facts into the elements of that crime. I am
not privy to conversations between heads of state, but I expect many prove to be fairly
freewheeling and informal at points. I am confident that such leaders often discuss
politics and the timing of actions in their respective countries. If this conversation is a
case of bribery, we could have marched every living president off to the penitentiary.
Presidents often use aid as leverage and seek to advance their administrations in the
timing or content of actions. The media often discusses how foreign visits are used for
political purposes, particularly as elections approach. The common reference to an
“October surprise” reflects this suspicion that presidents often use their offices, and
foreign policy, to improve their image. If these conversations are now going to be
reviewed under sweeping definitions of bribery, the chilling effect on future presidents
would be perfectly glacial.
The reference to the Hunter Biden deal with Burisma should never have occurred
and is worthy of the criticism of President Trump that it has unleashed. However, it is not
a case of bribery, whether you are adopting the view of an eighteenth century, or of a
twenty-first century prosecutor. As a criminal defense attorney, I would view such an
allegation from a prosecutor to be dubious to the point of being meritless.
B. Obstruction of Justice
Another crime that was sporadically mentioned during the House Intelligence
hearings was obstruction of justice or obstruction of Congress.66 Once again, with only a
66

It is important to distinguish between claims of “obstruction of justice,” “obstruction of
Congress,” and “contempt of Congress” – terms often just loosely in these controversies.
Obstruction of Congress falls under the same provisions as obstruction of justice,
specifically, 18 U.S.C. §1505 (prohibiting the "obstruction of proceedings before …
committees”). However, the Congress has also used its contempt powers to bring both
civil and criminal actions. The provision on contempt states:
“Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority
of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon
any matter under inquiry before either House, … or any committee of
either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having

35

 few days to prepare this testimony and with no public report on the specific allegations,
my analysis remains mired in uncertainty as to any plan to bring such a claim to the
foundational evidence for the charge. Most of the references to obstruction have been part
of a Ukraine-based impeachment plan that does not include any past alleged crimes from
the Russian investigation. I will therefore address the possibility of a Ukraine-related
obstruction article of impeachment.67 However, as I have previously written,68 I believe
an obstruction claim based on the Mueller Report would equally at odds with the record
and the controlling case law.69 The use of an obstruction theory from the Mueller Report
appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under
inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of
not more than [$ 100,000] nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a
common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.”
2 U.S.C.§§192, 194. Thus, when the Obama Administration refused to turn over critical
information in the Fast and Furious investigation, the Congress brought a contempt not an
impeachment action against Attorney General Eric Holder. In this case, the House would
skip any contempt action as well as any securing any order to compel testimony or
documents. Instead, it would go directly to impeachment for the failure to turn over
material or make available witnesses – a conflict that has arisen in virtually every modern
Administration.
67

For the record, I previously testified on obstruction theories in January in the context of
the Mueller investigation before the United States Senate Committee of the Judiciary as
part of the Barr confirmation hearing. United States Senate, Committee on the Judiciary,
The Confirmation of William Pelham Barr As Attorney General of the United States
Supreme Court (Jan. 16, 2019) (testimony of Professor Jonathan Turley).
68

See, e.g., Jonathan Turley, Mueller’s end: A conclusion on collusion but confusion on
Obstruction, THE HILL (March 24, 2019, 8:30 PM), https://thehill.com/opinion/whitehouse/435553-muellers-end-a-conclusion-on-collusion-but-confusion-on-obstruction.
69

I have previously criticized Special Counsel Mueller for his failure to reach a
conclusion on obstruction as he did on the conspiracy allegation. See Jonathan Turley,
Why Mueller may be fighting a public hearing on Capitol Hill, THE HILL (May 5, 2019,
10:00 AM), https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/445534-why-mueller-may-be-fightinga-public-hearing-on-capitol-hill. However, the report clearly undermines any credible
claim for obstruction. Mueller raises ten areas of concern over obstruction. The only
substantive allegation concerns his alleged order to White House Counsel Don McGahn
to fire Mueller. While the President has denied that order, the report itself destroys any
real case for showing a corrupt intent as an element of this crime. Mueller finds that
Trump had various non-criminal motivations for his comments regarding the
investigation, including his belief that there is a deep-state conspiracy as well as an effort
to belittle his 2016 election victory. Moreover, the Justice Department did what Mueller
should have done: it reached a conclusion. Both Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reviewed the Mueller Report and concluded that no

36

 would be unsupportable in the House and unsustainable in the Senate. Once again, the
lack of information (just weeks before an expected impeachment vote) on the grounds for
impeachment is both concerning and challenging. It is akin to being asked to diagnose a
patient’s survivability without knowing his specific illness.
Obstruction of justice is a more broadly defined crime than bribery and often
overlaps with other crimes like witness tampering, subornation, or specific acts designed
to obstruct a given proceeding. There are many federal provisions raising forms of
obstruction that reference parallel crimes. Thus, influencing a witness is a standalone
crime and also a form of obstruction under 18 U.S.C. 1504. In conventional criminal
cases, prosecutions can be relatively straightforward, such as cases of witness
intimidation under 18 U.S. 1503. Of course, this is no conventional case. The obstruction
claims leveled against President Trump in the Ukrainian context have centered on two
main allegations. First, there was considerable discussion of the moving of the transcript
of the call with President Zelensky to a classified server as a possible premeditated effort
to hide evidence. Second, there have been repeated references to the “obstruction” of
President Trump by invoking executive privileges or immunities to withhold witnesses
and documents from congressional committees. In my view, neither of these general
allegations establishes a plausible case of criminal obstruction or a viable impeachable
offense.
The various obstruction provisions generally share common elements. 18 U.S.C. §
1503, for example, broadly defines the crime of “corruptly” endeavoring “to influence,
obstruct or impede the due administration of justice.” This “omnibus” provision,
however, is most properly used for judicial proceedings such as grand jury investigations,
and the Supreme Court has narrowly construed its reach. There is also 18 U.S.C. §
1512(c), which contains a “residual clause” in subsection (c)(2), which reads:
(c) Whoever corruptly-- (1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a
record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to
impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official
proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official
proceeding, or attempts to do so [is guilty of the crime of obstruction].
[emphasis added].

cognizable case was presented for an allegation of obstruction of justice. Many members
of this Committee heralded the selection of Rosenstein as a consummate and apolitical
professional who was responsible for the appointment of the Special Counsel. He reached
this conclusion on the record sent by Mueller and, most importantly, the controlling case
law. As with the campaign finance allegation discussed in this testimony, an article based
on obstruction in the Russian investigation would seek the removal of a President on the
basis of an act previously rejected as a crime by the Justice Department. Many of us have
criticized the President for his many comments and tweets on the Russian investigation.
However, this is a process that must focus on impeachable conduct, not imprudent or
even obnoxious conduct.

37

 This residual clause has long been the subject of spirited and good-faith debate,
most recently including the confirmation of Attorney General Bill Barr. The controversy
centers on how to read the sweeping language in subsection (c)(2) given the specific
listing of acts in subsection (c)(1). It strains credulity to argue that, after limiting
obstruction with the earlier language, Congress would then intentionally expand the
provision beyond recognition with the use of the word “otherwise.” For that reason, it is
often argued that the residual clause has a more limited meaning of other acts of a similar
kind. As with the bribery cases, courts have sought to maintain clear and defined lines in
such interpretations to give notice of citizens as to what is criminal conduct under federal
law. The purpose is no less relevant in the context of impeachments.
The danger of ambiguity in criminal statutes is particularly great when they come
into collision with constitutional functions or constitutional rights like free speech.
Accordingly, federal courts have followed a doctrine of avoidance when ambiguous
statutes collide with constitutional functions or powers. In United States ex rel. Attorney
General v. Delaware & Hudson Co.,70 the Court held that “Under that doctrine, when ‘a
statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful
constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our
duty is to adopt the latter.’”71 This doctrine of avoidance has been used in conflicts
regarding proper the exercise of executive powers. Thus, when the Supreme Court
considered the scope of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (“FACA”) it avoided a
conflict with Article II powers through a narrower interpretation. In Public Citizen v. U.S.
Department of Justice,72 the Court had a broad law governing procedures and disclosures
committees, boards, and commissions. However, when applied to consultations with the
American Bar Association regarding judicial nominations, the Administration objected to
the conflict with executive privileges and powers. The Court adopted a narrow
interpretation: “When the validity of an act of the Congress is drawn in question, and
even if a serious doubt of constitutionality is raised, it is a cardinal principle that this
Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which
the question may be avoided.”73 These cases would weigh heavily in the context of
executive privilege and the testimony of key White House figures on communications
with the President.

70

213 U.S. 366 (1909).

71

Id. at 408; see also Op. Off. Legal Counsel 253, 278 (1996) (“It is a tool for choosing
between competing plausible interpretations of a statutory text, resting on the reasonable
presumption that Congress did not intend the alternative which raises serious
constitutional doubts. The canon is thus a means of giving effect to congressional intent,
not of subverting it.”).
72

491 U.S. 440 (1989).

73

Id.; see also Ass’n of American Physicians and Surgeons v. Clinton, 997 F.2d 898 (D.C.
Cir. 1993) (“Article II not only gives the President the ability to consult with his advisers
confidentially, but also, as a corollary, it gives him the flexibility to organize his advisers
and seek advice from them as he wishes.”).

38

 There is no evidence that President Trump acted with the corrupt intent required
for obstruction of justice on the record created by the House Intelligence Committee. Let
us start with the transfer of the file. The transfer of the transcript of the file was raised as
a possible act of obstruction to hide evidence of a quid pro quo. However, the nefarious
allegations behind the transfer were directly contradicted by Tim Morrison, the former
Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe and Russia on
the National Security Council. Morrison testified that he was the one who recommended
that the transcript be restricted after questions were raised about President Trump’s
request for investigations. He said that he did so solely to protect against leaks and that he
spoke to senior NSC lawyer John Eisenberg. When Morrison learned the transcript was
transferred to a classified server, he asked Eisenberg about the move. He indicated that
Eisenberg was surprised and told him it was a mistake. He described it as an
“administrative error.” Absent additional testimony or proof that Morrison has perjured
himself, the allegation concerning the transfer of the transcript would seem entirely
without factual support, let alone legal support, as a criminal obstructive act.
Most recently, the members have focused on an obstruction allegation centering
on the instructions of the White House to current and former officials not to testify due to
the expected assertions of executive privilege and immunity. Notably, the House has
elected not to subpoena core witnesses with first-hand evidence on any quid pro quo in
the Ukraine controversy. Democratic leaders have explained that they want a vote by the
end of December, and they are not willing to wait for a decision from the court system as
to the merits of these disputes. In my view, that position is entirely untenable and abusive
in an impeachment. Essentially, these members are suggesting a president can be
impeached for seeking a judicial review of a conflict over the testimony of high-ranking
advisers to the President over direct communications with the President. The position is
tragically ironic. The Democrats have at times legitimately criticized the President for
treating Article II as a font of unilateral authority. Yet, they are now doing the very same
thing in claiming Congress can demand any testimony or documents and then impeach
any president who dares to go to the courts. Magnifying the flaws in this logic is the fact
that the House has set out one of the shortest periods in history for this investigation—a
virtual rocket docket for impeachment. House leaders are suggesting that they will move
from notice of an alleged impeachable act at the beginning of September and adopt
articles of impeachment based on controversy roughly 14 weeks later. On this logic, the
House could give a president a week to produce his entire staff for testimony and then
impeach him when he seeks review by a federal judge.
As extreme as that hypothetical may seem, it is precisely the position of some of
those advancing this claim. In a recent exchange on National Public Radio with former
Rep. Liz Holtzman, I raised the utter lack of due process and fairness in such a position.74
Holtzman, one of the House Judiciary Committee members during the Nixon
impeachment, insisted that a president has no right to seek judicial review and that he
must turn over everything and anything demanded by Congress. Holtzman insisted that
74

Public Impeachment Hearing Analysis From Nixon, Clinton Figures, WBUR (Nov. 14,
2019), https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/11/14/first-impeachment-hearing-congresstrump-taylor-kent.

39

 the position of her Chairman, Peter Rodino, was that the House alone dictates what must
be produced. That is a position this Committee should not replicate. This returns us to the
third article of impeachment against Nixon discussed earlier. That article stated:
“In refusing to produce these papers and things Richard M. Nixon,
substituting his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the
inquiry, interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful
subpoenas of the House of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself
functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of
impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of
Representatives… [i]n all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner
contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional
government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to
the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”75
Once again, I have always been critical of this article. Nixon certainly did obstruct the
process in a myriad of ways, from witness tampering to other criminal acts. However, on
the critical material sought by Congress, Nixon went to Court and ultimately lost in his
effort to withhold the evidence. He had every right to do so. On July 25, 1974, the Court
ruled in United States v. Nixon76 that the President had to turn over the evidence. On
August 8, 1974, Nixon announced his intention to resign. Notably, in that decision, the
Court recognized the existence of executive privilege—a protection that requires a
balancing of the interests of the legislative and executive branches by the judicial branch.
The Court ruled that “[n]either the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for
confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain
an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under
all circumstances.”77 Yet, the position stated in the current controversy is perfectly
Nixonian. It is asserting the same “absolute, unqualified” authority of Congress to
demand evidence while insisting that a president has no authority to refuse it. The answer
is obvious. A President cannot “substitute[] his judgment” for Congress on what they are
entitled to see and likewise Congress cannot substitute its judgment as to what a President
can withhold. The balance of those interests is performed by the third branch that is
constitutionally invested with the authority to review and resolve such disputes.
The recent decision by a federal court holding that former White House Counsel
Don McGahn must appear before a House committee is an example of why such review
is so important and proper.78 I criticized the White House for telling McGahn and others
not to appear before Congress under a claim of immunity. Indeed, when I last appeared
before this Committee as a witness, I encouraged that litigation and said I believed the
75

WATERGATE.INFO, https://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment.

76

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 706 (1974).

77

Id.

78

Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn, Civ. No. 19-cv-2379 (KBJ), 2019 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 203983 (D.D.C. 2019).

40

 Committee would prevail.79 Notably, the opinion in Committee on the Judiciary v.
McGahn rejected the immunity claims of the White House but also reaffirmed “the
Judiciary's duty under the Constitution to interpret the law and to declare government
overreaches unlawful.”80 The Court stressed that
“the Framers made clear that the proper functioning of a federal
government that is consistent with the preservation of constitutional rights
hinges just as much on the intersectionality of the branches as it does on
their separation, and it is the assigned role of the Judiciary to exercise the
adjudicatory power prescribed to them under the Constitution's framework
to address the disputed legal issues that are spawned from the resulting
friction.”81
The position of this Committee was made stronger by allowing the judiciary to rule on
the question. Indeed, that ruling now lays the foundation for a valid case of obstruction. If
President Trump defies a final order without a stay from a higher court, it would
constitute real obstruction. Just yesterday, in Trump v. Deutsche Bank, the United States
for the Second Circuit became the latest in a series of courts to reject the claims made by
the President’s counsel to withhold financial or tax records from Congress.82 The Court
reaffirmed that such access to evidence is “an important issue concerning the investigative
authority.”83 With such review, the courts stand with Congress on the issue of disclosure
and ultimately obstruction in congressional investigations. Moreover, such cases can be
expedited in the courts. In the Nixon litigation, courts moved those cases quickly to the
Supreme Court. In contrast, the House leaderships have allowed two months to slip away
without using its subpoena authority to secure the testimony of critical witnesses. The
decision to adopt an abbreviated schedule for the investigation and not to seek to compel
such testimony is a strategic choice of the House leadership. It is not the grounds for an
impeachment.
If the House moves forward with this impeachment basis, it would be repeating
the very same abusive tactics used against President Andrew Johnson. As discussed
earlier, the House literally manufactured a crime upon which to impeach Johnson in the
Tenure in Office Act. This was a clearly unconstitutional act with a trap-door criminal
provision (transparently referenced as a “high misdemeanor”) if Johnson were to fire the
Secretary of War. Congress created a crime it knew Johnson would commit by using his
recognized authority as president to pick his own cabinet. In this matter, Congress set a
79

See United States House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, “Executive
Privilege and Congressional Oversight” (May 15, 2019) (testimony of Professor Jonathan
Turley).
80

McGahn, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 203983, at *11.

81

Id. at 98.

82

Trump v. Deutsche Bank, No. 19-1540-cv (2d Cir. Dec. 3, 2019) (available at
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6565847-Deutsche-Bank-20191203.html).
83

Id.

41

 short period for investigation and then announced Trump would be impeached for
seeking, as other presidents have done, judicial review over the demand for testimony
and documents.
The obstruction allegation is also undermined by the fact that many officials opted
to testify, despite the orders from the President that they should decline. These include
core witnesses in the impeachment hearings, like National Security Council Director of
European Affairs Alexander Vindman, Ambassador William Taylor, Ambassador
Gordon Sondland, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, Acting Assistant
Secretary of State Philip Reeker, Under Secretary of State David Hale, Deputy Associate
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mark Sandy, and Foreign Service
Officer David Holmes. All remain in federal service in good standing. Thus, the President
has sought judicial review without taking disciplinary actions against those who defied
his instruction not to testify.
If this Committee elects to seek impeachment on the failure to yield to
congressional demands in an oversight or impeachment investigation, it will have to
distinguish a long line of cases where prior presidents sought the very same review while
withholding witnesses and documents. Take the Obama administration position, for
instance, on the investigation of “Fast and Furious,” which was a moronic gunwalking
operation in which the government arranged for the illegal sale of powerful weapons to
drug cartels in order to track their movement. One such weapon was used to murder
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and Congress, justifiably so, began an oversight
investigation. Some members called for impeachment proceedings. But President Obama
invoked executive privilege and barred essential testimony and documents. The Obama
Administration then ran out the clock in the judiciary, despite a legal rejection of its
untenable and extreme claim by a federal court. During its litigation, the Obama
Administration argued the courts had no authority over its denial of such witnesses and
evidence to Congress. In Committee on Oversight & Government Reform v. Holder,84
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, ruled that “endorsing the proposition that the executive may
assert an unreviewable right to withhold materials from the legislature would offend the
Constitution more than undertaking to resolve the specific dispute that has been presented
here. After all, the Constitution contemplates not only a separation, but a balance, of
powers.” The position of the Obama Administration was extreme and absurd. It was also
widely viewed as an effort to run out the clock on the investigation. Nevertheless,
President Obama had every right to seek judicial review in the matter and many members
of this very Committee supported his position.
Basing impeachment on this obstruction theory would itself be an abuse of power
. . . by Congress. It would be an extremely dangerous precedent to set for future
presidents and Congresses in making an appeal to the Judiciary into “high crime and
misdemeanor.”

84

979 F. Supp. 2d 1, 3-4 (D.D.C. 2013).

42

 C. Extortion.
As noted earlier, extortion and bribery cases share a common law lineage. Under
laws like the Hobbs Act, prosecutors can allege different forms of extortion. The classic
form of extortion is coercive extortion to secure property “by violence, force, or fear.”85
Even if one were to claim the loss of military aid could instill fear in a country, that is
obviously not a case of coercive extortion as that crime has previously been defined.
Instead, it would presumably be alleged as extortion “under color of official right.”86
Clearly, both forms of extortion have a coercive element, but the suggestion is that
Trump was “trying to extort” the Ukrainians by withholding aid until they agreed to open
investigations. The problem is that this allegation is no closer to the actual crime of
extortion than it is to its close cousin bribery. The Hobbs Act defines extortion as “the
obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual
or threatened force, violence, or fear or under color of official right.”87
As shown in cases like United States v. Silver,88 extortion is subject to the same limiting
definition as bribery and resulted in a similar overturning of convictions. Another
obvious threshold problem is defining an investigation into alleged corruption as
“property.” Blackstone described a broad definition of extortion in early English law as
“an abuse of public, justice which consists in an officer's unlawfully taking, by colour of
his office, from any man, any money or thing of value, that is not due him, or more than
is due, or before it is due.”89 The use of anything “of value” today would be instantly
rejected. Extortion cases involve tangible property, not possible political advantage.90 In
this case, Trump asked for cooperation with the Justice Department in its investigation
into the origins of the FBI investigation on the 2016 election. As noted before, that would
make a poor basis for any criminal or impeachment theory. The Biden investigation may
have tangible political benefits, but it is not a form of property. Indeed, Trump did not
know when such an investigation would be completed or what it might find. Thus, the
request was for an investigation that might not even benefit Trump.
The theory advanced for impeachment bears a close similarity to one of the
extortion theories in United States v. Blagojevich where the Seventh Circuit overturned
an extortion conviction based on the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, pressuring
then Sen. Barack Obama to make him a cabinet member or help arrange for a highpaying job in exchange for Blagojevich appointing a friend of Obama’s to a vacant
Senate seat. The prosecutors argued such a favor was property for the purposes of
extortion. The court dismissed the notion, stating “The President-elect did not have a
85

18 U.S.C. §§ 1951 (2018).

86

Id.

87

18 U.S.C. § 1951(b)(2).

88

864 F.3d 102 (2d Cir. 2017).

89

4 WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES 141 (1769).

90

See Scheidler v. Nat’l Org. for Women, 537 U.S. 393, 404 (2003) (citing United
States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 400 (1973)).

43

 property interest in any Cabinet job, so an attempt to get him to appoint a particular
person to the Cabinet is not an attempt to secure ‘property’ from the President (or the
citizenry at large).”’91 In the recent hearings, witnesses spoke of the desire for
“deliverables” sought with the aid. Whatever those “deliverables” may have been, they
were not property as defined for the purposes of extortion any more than the “logrolling”
rejected in Blagojevich.
There is one other aspect of the Blagojevich opinion worth noting. As I discussed
earlier, the fact that the military aid was required to be obligated by the end of September
weakens the allegation of bribery. Witnesses called before the House Intelligence
Committee testified that delays were common, but that aid had to be released by
September 30th. It was released on September 11th. The ability to deny the aid, or to even
withhold it past September 30th is questionable and could have been challenged in court.
The status of the funds also undermines the expansive claims on what constitutes an
“official right” or “property”:
“The indictment charged Blagojevich with the ‘color of official right’
version of extortion, but none of the evidence suggests that Blagojevich
claimed to have an ‘official right’ to a job in the Cabinet. He did have an
‘official right’ to appoint a new Senator, but unless a position in the
Cabinet is ‘property’ from the President's perspective, then seeking it does
not amount to extortion. Yet a political office belongs to the people, not to
the incumbent (or to someone hankering after the position). Cleveland v.
United States, 531 U.S. 12 (2000), holds that state and municipal licenses,
and similar documents, are not ‘property’ in the hands of a public
agency. That's equally true of public positions. The President-elect did not
have a property interest in any Cabinet job, so an attempt to get him to
appoint a particular person to the Cabinet is not an attempt to secure
‘property’ from the President (or the citizenry at large).”92
A request for an investigation in another country or the release of money already
authorized for Ukraine are even more far afield from the property concepts addressed by
the Seventh Circuit.
The obvious flaws in the extortion theory were also made plain by the Supreme
Court in Sekhar v. United States,93 where the defendant sent emails threatening to reveal
embarrassing personal information to the New York State Comptroller’s general counsel
in order to secure the investment of pension funds with the defendant. In an argument
analogous to the current claims, the prosecutors suggested political or administrative
support was a form of intangible property. As in McDonnell, the Court was unanimous in
rejecting the “absurd” definition of property. The Court was highly dismissive of such
convenient linguistic arguments and noted that “shifting and imprecise characterization of
91

United States v. Blagojevich, 794 F.3d 729, 735 (7th Cir. 2015).

92

Id.

93

570 U.S. 729 (2013).

44

 the alleged property at issue betrays the weakness of its case.”94 It concluded that
“[a]dopting the Government’s theory here would not only make nonsense of words; it
would collapse the longstanding distinction between extortion and coercion and ignore
Congress’s choice to penalize one but not the other. That we cannot do.”95 Nor should
Congress. Much like such expansive interpretations would be “absurd” for citizens in
criminal cases, it would be equally absurd in impeachment cases.
To define a request of this kind as extortion would again convert much of politics
into a criminal enterprise. Indeed, much of politics is the leveraging of aid or subsidies or
grants for votes and support. In Blagojevich, the court dismissed such “logrolling” as the
basis for extortion since it is “a common exercise.”96 If anything of political value is now
the subject of the Hobbs Act, the challenge in Washington would not be defining what
extortion is, but what it is not.
D. Campaign Finance Violation
Some individuals have claimed that the request for investigations also constitutes
a felony violation of the election finance laws. Given the clear language of that law and
the controlling case law, there are no good-faith grounds for such an argument. To put it
simply, this dog won’t hunt as either a criminal or impeachment matter. U.S.C. section
30121 of Title 52 states: “It shall be unlawful for a foreign national, directly or indirectly,
to make a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an
express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a
federal, state, or local election.”
On first blush, federal election laws would seem to offer more flexibility to the
House since the Federal Election Commission has adopted a broad interpretation of what
can constitute a “thing of value” as a contribution. The Commission states “’Anything of
value’ includes all ‘in-kind contributions,’ defined as ‘the provision of any goods or
services without charge or at a charge that is less than the usual and normal charge for
such goods or services.’”97 However, the Justice Department already reviewed the call
and correctly concluded it was not a federal election violation. This determination was
made by the prosecutors who make the decisions on whether to bring such cases. The
Justice Department concluded that the call did not involve a request for a “thing of value”
under the federal law. Congress would be alleging a crime that has been declared not to
be a crime by career prosecutors. Such a decision would highlight the danger of claiming
criminal acts, while insisting that impeachment does not require actual crimes. The “close
enough for impeachment” argument will only undermine the legitimacy of the

94

Id. at 737.

95

Id.

96

Blagojevich, 794 F.3d at 735.

97

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, THE LAW OF A ‘THING OF VALUE’ (Oct. 2019),
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2019-10-ELW-the-law-of-athing-of-value.pdf.

45

 impeachment process, particularly if dependent on an election fraud allegation that itself
is based on a demonstrably slipshod theory.
The effort to pound these facts into an election law violation would require some
arbitrary and unsupported findings. First, to establish a felony violation, the thing of
value must be worth $25,000 or more. As previously mentioned, we do not know if the
Ukrainians would conclude an investigation in the year before an election. We also do
not know whether an investigation would offer a favorable or unfavorable conclusion. It
could prove costly or worthless. In order for the investigation to have value, you would
have to assume one of two acts were valuable. First, there may be value in the
announcement of an investigation, but an announcement is not a finding of fact against
the Bidens. It is pure speculation what value such an announcement might have had or
whether it would have occurred at a time or in a way to have such value. Second, you
could assume that the Bidens would be found to have engaged in a corrupt practice and
that the investigation would make those findings within the year. There is no cognizable
basis to place a value on such unknown information that might be produced at some time
in the future. Additionally, this theory would make any encouragement (or
disencouragement) of an investigation into another county a possible campaign violation
if it could prove beneficial to a president. As discussed below, diplomatic cables suggest
that the Obama Administration pressured other countries to drop criminal investigations
into the U.S. torture program. Such charges would have proven damaging to President
Obama who was criticized for shifting his position on the campaign in favor of
investigations.98 Would an agreement to scuttle investigations be viewed as a “thing of
value” for a president like Obama? The question is the lack of a limiting principle in this
expansive view of campaign contributions.
There is also the towering problem of using federal campaign laws to regulate
communications between the heads of state. Any conversation between heads of state are
inherently political. Every American president facing reelection schedules foreign trips
and actions to advance their political standing. Indeed, such trips and signing ceremonies
are often discussed as transparently political decisions by incumbents. Under the logic of
this theory, any request that could benefit a president is suddenly an unlawful campaign
finance violation valued arbitrarily at $25,000 or more. Such a charge would have no
chance of surviving a threshold of motion to dismiss.
Even if such cases were to make it to a jury, few such cases have been brought
and the theory has fared poorly. The best-known usage of the theory was during the
prosecution of former Sen. John Edwards. Edwards was running for the Democratic
nomination in 2008 when rumors surfaced that he not only had an affair with filmmaker
Rielle Hunter but also sired a child with her. He denied the affair, as did Hunter. Later it
98

Adam Serwer, Obama’s Legacy of Impunity For Torture, THE ATLANTIC (Mar. 14,
2018), https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/obamas-legacy-of-impunityfor-torture/555578/; Kenneth Roth, Barack Obama’s Shaky Legacy on Human Rights,
FOREIGN POLICY (Jan. 4, 2017), https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/04/barack-obamasshaky-legacy-on-human-rights/; CIA Off The Hook For Past Waterboarding, CBS NEWS
(Apr. 16, 2009, 2:43 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-off-the-hook-for-pastwaterboarding/.

46

 was revealed that Fred Baron, the Edwards campaign finance chairman, gave money to
Hunter, but he insisted it was his own money and that he was doing so without the
knowledge of Edwards. Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, also obtained funds
from heiress Rachel Lambert Mellon to pay to Hunter. In the end, Mellon gave $700,000
in order to provide for the child and mother in what prosecutors alleged as a campaign
contribution in violation of federal campaign-finance law.99 The jury acquitted Edwards
and the Justice Department dropped all remaining counts.100
Although the Edwards case involved large quantities of cash the jury failed to
convict because they found the connection to the election too attenuated. The theory
being advanced in the current proceedings views non-existent information that may never
be produced as a contribution to an election that might occur before any report is issued.
That is the basis upon which some would currently impeach a president, under a standard
that the Framers wanted to be clear and exacting. Framers like Madison rejected “vague”
standards that would “be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.” The
campaign finance claim makes “maladministration” look like the model of clarity and
precision in the comparison to a standard based on an assumption of future findings to be
delivered at an unknown time.
E. Abuse of Power
The Ukraine controversy was originally characterized not as one of these forced
criminal allegations, but as a simple abuse of power. As I stated from the outset of this
controversy, a president can be impeached for abuses of power. In Federalist #65,
Alexander Hamilton referred to impeachable offenses as “those offences which proceed
from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of
some public trust.”101 Even though every presidential impeachment has been founded on
criminal allegations, it is possible to impeach a president for non-criminal acts. Indeed,
some of the allegations contained in the articles of impeachment against all three
presidents were distinctly non-criminal in character. The problem is that we have never
impeached a president solely or even largely on the basis of a non-criminal abuse of
power allegation. There is good reason for that unbroken record. Abuses of power tend to
be even less defined and more debatable as a basis for impeachment than some of the
crimes already mentioned. Again, while a crime is not required to impeach, clarity is
necessary. In this case, there needs to be clear and unequivocal proof of a quid pro quo.
That is why I have been critical of how this impeachment has unfolded. I am particularly
99

Manuel Roig-Franzia, John Edwards trial: Jurors seek information on "Bunny'
Mellon's Role, WASH. POST (May 23,
2012), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/john-edwards-trial-jurors-seekinformation-on-bunny-mellons-role/2012/05/23/gJQAtiFzkU_story.html.
100

Dave Levinthal, Campaign cash laws tough to enforce, POLITICO (June 1, 2012, 1:47
PM), http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/76961.html.
101

ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FEDERALIST NO. 65 (1788), reprinted in THE FEDERALIST
PAPERS 396, 396 (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961).

47

 concerned about the abbreviated schedule and thin record that will be submitted to the
full house.
Unlike the other dubious criminal allegations, the problem with the abuse of
power allegation is its lack of foundation. As I have previously discussed, there remain
core witnesses and documents that have not been sought through the courts. The failure
to seek this foundation seems to stem from an arbitrary deadline at the end of December.
Meeting that deadline appears more important than building a viable case for
impeachment. Two months have been wasted that should have been put toward litigating
access to this missing evidence. The choice remains with the House. It must decide if it
wants a real or recreational impeachment. If it is the former, my earlier testimony and
some of my previous writing show how a stronger impeachment can be developed.102
The principle problem with proving an abuse of power theory is the lack of direct
evidence due to the failure to compel key witnesses to testify or production of key
documents. The current record does not establish a quid pro quo. What we know is that
President Trump wanted two investigations. The first investigation into the 2016 election
is not a viable basis for an abuse of power, as I have previously addressed. The second
investigation into the Bidens would be sufficient, but there is no direct evidence President
Trump intended to violate federal law in withholding the aid past the September 30th
deadline or even wanted a quid pro quo maintained in discussions with the Ukrainians
regarding the aid. If Trump encouraged an investigation into the Bidens alone, it would
not be a viable impeachment claim. The request was inappropriate, but it was not an offer
to trade public money for a foreign investigation. President Trump continued to push for
these investigations but that does not mean that he was planning to violate federal law.
Indeed, Ambassador Sondland testified that, when he concluded there was a quid pro
quo, he understood it was a visit to the White House being withheld. White House visits
are often used as leverage from everything from United Nations votes to domestic policy
changes. Trump can maintain he was suspicious about the Ukrainians in supporting his
2016 rival and did not want to grant such a meeting without a demonstration of political
neutrality. If he dangled a White House meeting in these communications, few would
view that as unprecedented, let alone impeachable.
Presidents often put pressure on other countries which many of us view as
inimical to our values or national security. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack
Obama reportedly put pressure on other countries not to investigate the U.S. torture
program or seek the arrest of those responsible.103 President Obama and his staff also
reportedly pressured the Justice Department not to initiate criminal prosecution stemming
102

Jonathan Turley, How The Democrats can build a better case to impeach President
Trump, THE HILL (Nov. 25, 2019, 12:00 PM),
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/471890-how-democrats-can-build-a-better-case-toimpeach-president-trump.
103

David Corn, Obama and GOPers Worked Together to Kill Bush Torture Probe,
MOTHER JONES (Dec. 1, 2010),
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/wikileaks-cable-obama-quashed-tortureinvestigation/ (discussing cables pressuring the Spanish government to shut down a
judicial investigation into torture).

48

 from the torture program.104 Moreover, presidents often discuss political issues with their
counterparts and make comments that are troubling or inappropriate. However,
contemptible is not synonymous with impeachable. Impeachment is not a vehicle to
monitor presidential communications for such transgressions. That is why making the
case of a quid pro quo is so important – a case made on proof, not presumptions. While
critics have insisted that there is no alternative explanation, it is willful blindness to
ignore the obvious defense. Trump can argue that he believed the Obama Administration
failed to investigate a corrupt contract between Burisma and Hunter Biden. He publicly
called for the investigation into the Ukraine matters. Requesting an investigation is not
illegal any more than a leader asking for actions from their counterparts during election
years.
Trump will also be able to point to three direct conversations on the record. His
call with President Zelensky does not state a quid pro quo. In his August conversation
with Sen. Ron Johnson (R., WI.), President Trump reportedly denied any quid pro quo. In
his September conversation with Ambassador Sondland, he also denied any quid pro quo.
The House Intelligence Committee did an excellent job in undermining the strength of
the final two calls by showing that President Trump was already aware of the
whistleblower controversy emerging on Capitol Hill. However, that does not alter the fact
that those direct accounts stand uncontradicted by countervailing statements from the
President. In addition, President Zelensky himself has said that he did not discuss any
quid pro quo with President Trump. Indeed, Ambassador Taylor testified that it was not
until the publication of the Politico article on September 31st that the Ukrainians voiced
concerns over possible preconditions. That was just ten days before the release of the aid.
That means that the record lacks not only direct conversations with President Trump
(other than the three previously mentioned) but even direct communications with the
Ukrainians on a possible quid pro quo did not occur until shortly before the aid release.
Yet, just yesterday, new reports filtered out on possible knowledge before that date—
highlighting the premature move to drafting articles of impeachment without a full and
complete record.105
Voters should not be asked to assume that President Trump would have violated
federal law and denied the aid without a guarantee on the investigations. The current
narrative is that President Trump only did the right thing when “he was caught.” It is
possible that he never intended to withhold the aid past the September 30th deadline while
also continuing to push the Ukrainians on the corruption investigation. It is possible that
Trump believed that the White House meeting was leverage, not the military aid, to push
for investigations. It is certainly true that both criminal and impeachment cases can be
104

Glenn Greenwald, Obama’s justice department grants final immunity to Bush’s CIA
torturers, THE GUARDIAN (Aug. 31, 2012 12:00PM)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/31/obama-justice-departmentimmunity-bush-cia-torturer.
105

Andrew Kramer, Ukraine Knew Of Aid Freeze in July, Says Ex-Top Official In Kyiv,
N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 3, 2019, 7:59 am),
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/world/europe/ukraine-impeachment-militaryaid.html.

49

 based on circumstantial evidence, but that is less common when direct evidence is
available but unsecured in the investigation. Proceeding to a vote on this incomplete
record is a dangerous precedent to set for this country. Removing a sitting President is not
supposed to be easy or fast. It is meant to be thorough and complete. This is neither.
F. The Censure Option
Finally, there is one recurring option that was also raised during the Clinton
impeachment: censure. I have been a long critic of censure as a part of impeachment
inquiries and I will not attempt to hide my disdain for this option. It is not a creature of
impeachment and indeed is often used by members as an impeachment-lite alternative for
those who do not want the full constitutional caloric load of an actual impeachment.
Censure has no constitutional foundation or significance. Noting the use of censure in a
couple of prior cases does not make it precedent any more than Senator Arlen Specter’s
invocation of the Scottish “Not Proven” in the Clinton trial means that we now have a
third option in Senate voting. If the question is whether Congress can pass a resolution
with censure in its title, the answer is clearly yes. However, having half of Congress
express their condemnation for this president with the other half opposing such a
condemnation will hardly be news to most voters. I am agnostic about such extraconstitutional options except to caution that members should be honest and not call such
resolutions part of the impeachment process.
V. CONCLUSION
Allow me to be candid in my closing remarks.
I get it. You are mad. The President is mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My
Republican friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog is mad . . .
and Luna is a golden doodle and they are never mad. We are all mad and where has it
taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad or will it only give an invitation
for the madness to follow in every future administration?
That is why this is wrong. It is not wrong because President Trump is right. His
call was anything but “perfect” and his reference to the Bidens was highly inappropriate.
It is not wrong because the House has no legitimate reason to investigate the Ukrainian
controversy. The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political
opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense.
It is not wrong because we are in an election year. There is no good time for an
impeachment, but this process concerns the constitutional right to hold office in this term,
not the next.
No, it is wrong because this is not how an American president should be
impeached. For two years, members of this Committee have declared that criminal and
impeachable acts were established for everything from treason to conspiracy to
obstruction. However, no action was taken to impeach. Suddenly, just a few weeks ago,
the House announced it would begin an impeachment inquiry and push for a final vote in
just a matter of weeks. To do so, the House Intelligence Committee declared that it would

50

 not subpoena a host of witnesses who have direct knowledge of any quid pro quo.
Instead, it will proceed on a record composed of a relatively small number of witnesses
with largely second-hand knowledge of the position. The only three direct conversations
with President Trump do not contain a statement of a quid pro quo and two expressly
deny such a pre-condition. The House has offered compelling arguments why those two
calls can be discounted by the fact that President Trump had knowledge of the underlying
whistleblower complaint. However, this does not change the fact that it is moving
forward based on conjecture, assuming what the evidence would show if there existed the
time or inclination to establish it. The military aid was released after a delay that the
witnesses described as “not uncommon” for this or prior Administrations. This is not a
case of the unknowable. It is a case of the peripheral. The House testimony is replete with
references to witnesses like John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Mulvaney who clearly
hold material information. To impeach a president on such a record would be to expose
every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.
Principle often takes us to a place where we would prefer not to be. That was the
place the “Republican Recusants” found themselves in 1868 when sitting in judgment of
a president they loathed and despised. However, they took an oath not to Andrew
Johnson, but to the Constitution. One of the greatest among them, Lyman Trumbull (RIll.) explained his fateful decision to vote against Johnson’s impeachment charges even at
the cost of his own career:
“Once set the example of impeaching a President for what, when the
excitement of the hour shall have subsided, will be regarded as insufficient
causes … no future President will be safe who happens to differ with the
majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate …
I tremble for the future of my country. I cannot be an instrument to produce
such a result; and at the hazard of the ties even of friendship and affection,
till calmer times shall do justice to my motives, no alternative is left
me…”106
Trumbull acted in the same type of age of rage that we have today. He knew that raising a
question about the underlying crime or the supporting evidence would instantly be
condemned as approving of the underlying conduct of a president. In an age of rage, there
seems to be no room for nuance or reservation. Yet, that is what the Constitution expects
of us. Expects of you.
For generations, the seven Republicans who defected to save President Johnson
from removal have been heralded as profiles of courage. In recalling the moment he was
called to vote, Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas said he “almost literally looked down
into my open grave.” He jumped because the price was too great not to. Such moments
are easy to celebrate from a distance of time and circumstance. However, that is precisely
the moment in which you now find yourself. “When the excitement of the hour [has]
106

WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST, GRAND INQUESTS: THE HISTORIC IMPEACHMENTS OF
JUSTICE SAMUEL CHASE AND PRESIDENT ANDREW JOHNSON 243-44 (1992).

51

 subsided” and “calmer times” prevail, I do not believe that this impeachment will be
viewed as bringing credit upon this body. It is possible that a case for impeachment could
be made, but it cannot be made on this record. To return to Wordsworth, the Constitution
is not a call to arms for the “Happy Warriors.” The Constitution calls for circumspection,
not celebration, at the prospect of the removal of an American president. It is easy to
allow one’s “judgment [to be] affected by your moral approval of the lines” in an
impeachment narrative. But your oath demands more, even personal and political
sacrifice, in deciding whether to impeach a president for only the third time in the history
of this Republic.
In this age of rage, many are appealing for us to simply put the law aside and “just
do it” like this is some impulse-buy Nike sneaker. You can certainly do that. You can
declare the definitions of crimes alleged are immaterial and this is an exercise of politics,
not law. However, the legal definitions and standards that I have addressed in my
testimony are the very thing dividing rage from reason. Listening to these calls to
dispense with such legal niceties, brings to mind a famous scene with Sir Thomas More
in “A Man For All Seasons.” In a critical exchange, More is accused by his son-in-law
William Roper of putting the law before morality and that More would “give the Devil
the benefit of law!” When More asks if Roper would instead “cut a great road through the
law to get after the Devil?,” Roper proudly declares “Yes, I’d cut down every law in
England to do that!” More responds by saying “And when the last law was down, and the
Devil turned ‘round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This
country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if
you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand
upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my
own safety’s sake!”
Both sides in this controversy have demonized the other to justify any measure in
defense much like Roper. Perhaps that is the saddest part of all of this. We have forgotten
the common article of faith that binds each of us to each other in our Constitution.
However, before we cut down the trees so carefully planted by the Framers, I hope you
consider what you will do when the wind blows again . . . perhaps for a Democratic
president. Where will you stand then “the laws all being flat?”107
Thank you again for the honor of testifying before you today. I am happy to answer any
questions that you may have.108
107

R. BOLT, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS 37-38 (Vintage ed. 1962).

108

As discussed above, I have been asked to include some of my relevant scholarship:
Jonathan Turley, A Fox In The Hedges: Vermeule’s Optimizing Constitutionalism For
A Suboptimal World, 82 U. CHI. L. REV. 517 (2015); Jonathan Turley, Madisonian
Tectonics: How Form Follows Function in Constitutional and
Architectural Interpretation, 83 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 305 (2015); Jonathan Turley,
Recess Appointments in the Age of Regulation, 93 B.U. L. Rev. 1523 (2013); Jonathan
Turley, Constitutional Adverse Possession: Recess Appointments and the Role of
Historical Practice in Constitutional Interpretation, 2013 WIS. L. REV. 965 (2013);
Jonathan Turley, Paradise Lost: The Clinton Administration and the Erosion of

52

 Presidential Privilege, 60 MD. L. REV. 205 (2000) (Symposium); Jonathan Turley,
“From Pillar to Post”: The Prosecution of Sitting Presidents, 37 AM. CRIM. L. REV.
1049 (2000); Jonathan Turley, A Crisis of Faith: Congress and The Federal Tobacco
Litigation, 37 HARV. J. ON LEGIS. 433 (2000); Jonathan Turley, Through a Looking
Glass Darkly: National Security and Statutory Interpretation, 53 SMU L. REV. 205
(2000) (Symposium); Jonathan Turley, Senate Trials and Factional Disputes:
Impeachment as a Madisonian Device, 49 DUKE L.J. 1 (1999); Jonathan Turley, The
“Executive Function” Theory, the Hamilton Affair and Other Constitutional
Mythologies, 77 N.C. L. REV. 1791 (1999); Jonathan Turley, Congress as Grand
Jury: The Role of the House of Representatives in the Impeachment of an American
President, 67 GEO. WASH. L. REV. 735-790 (1999) (Symposium); Jonathan Turley,
Reflections on Murder, Misdemeanors, and Madison, 28 HOFSTRA L. REV. 439 (1999)
(Symposium); Jonathan Turley, Dualistic Values in the Age of International
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