Glenn Kirschner on Impeachment

My friend Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor who has taught at the George Washington University School of Law and currently serves as a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, wrote a series of tweets (@glennkirschner2) recently that discusses impeachment in easy to understand terms. With his permission, I reduced his tweets to the following paragraphs that he originally wrote on October 2, 2019:

Let’s assume that after being elected, the president quickly grew weary of governing. So all-day, every-day, the president lounged in his private quarters, watching TV. He refused to turn his attention to legislation that was sent to him for signature or veto.

He refused to attend state functions, hold press conferences, meet w/other world leaders or even discuss the business of government. He wouldn’t engage w/his military commanders, his law enforcement leaders or his intelligence community advisors on matters of national security.

To sum it up, he simply refused to govern. Now, you can spend days going through the big, blue Federal Code book looking for the crime of “presidential sloth,” but you won’t find it. So under the above scenario, the president has committed no crime.

But he PLAINLY has violated the public trust by abdicating his responsibility to govern, and for that, he can and should be impeached. So, let’s be clear, to be impeached, a president need not commit one of the crimes on today’s criminal code books.

Indeed, this big, blue Federal Code book did not even exist at the time of the drafting of the constitution. Today’s crimes were not even codified at the time. So it makes absolutely no sense to assert that, for impeachment to move forward, a president would have to violate a criminal law (one in the big, blue book) that did not even exist at the time “high crimes and misdemeanors” was adopted as the impeachment standard! No, it’s all about an abuse of the public trust, a misuse of one’s power or office.

You know what IS an abuse of power and a misuse of office? Holding hostage $ allocated by Congress to support another country – Ukraine- in defending itself against illegal Russian aggression and saying, ‘I’ll give you this money ONLY IF you do a favor for me, a favor that involves knocking down my political opponent.’ THAT is an abuse of power and of public office. It’s also an abuse of Congressional will (using Congressionally-allocated funds for your own re-election purposes), it’s an abuse of the public trust and it’s an affront to the American people. Does it technically violate some law in the big, blue book? THAT. DOESN’T. MATTER. It plainly constitutes a high crime or misdemeanor as the constitution contemplated. And it is impeachable.

Follow Glenn on Twitter: @glennkirschner2