Heather Cox Richardson - January 17, 2020 - Letters From An American

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

"SNIP....

This afternoon, Dershowitz said that his role will simply be to present an hour-long argument against impeachment, arguing that “Abuse of power, even if proved, is not an impeachable offense. That’s what the framers rejected. They didn’t want to give Congress the authority to remove a president because he abused his power.”

This. Is. Absurd.

The Founders designed impeachment precisely to rein in a president run amok. The Founders worried terribly about abuse of power, and in Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton—who was no leveler—actually talked about the Senate’s role in impeachment trials. The Senate must judge “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Perhaps more to the point, the third of the Nixon articles of impeachment explicitly dealt with abuse of power. (The House didn’t vote on these, but they would have passed and he would have been convicted by the Senate if he hadn’t resigned).

It charged that he had willfully ignored subpoenas issued by the House, refusing to produce documents “deemed necessary… to resolve by direct evidence” what the president had done. By refusing to produce the documents, Nixon substituted “his judgment as to what materials were necessary for the inquiry,” for the judgment of Congress. This set “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 was, the article said, “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.”

.....SNIP"