Bonifaz John - The Constitution demands it: the case for the impeachment of Donald Trump

My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.

Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, Statement on the Articles of Impeachment (July 25, 1974)

Impeachment is not a constitutional crisis.

Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis.

Like any antidote, it must be employed judiciously. When the crisis arises, however, patriots cannot be cautious about utilizing the strong medicine that was conjured in the summer of 1787 by the authors of a constitution that was written with an eye toward averting the elected despotism of a president who might conspire to make himself a king for four years.

The wisest of the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia, just four years after their rebellion had seen off the rule of King George III, were well aware that their imprecise efforts might forge not just a new nation but a new approach to governing. They well recognized the vulnerabilities of a project that experimented, however tentatively, with the revolutionary prospect of democracy. They worried, as Lincoln would decades later, about whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. Above all, they recognized that their project of replacing the rule of man with the rule of law would be threatened by what George Mason described as the easy step to hereditary Monarchy. To avert it, Mason warned, No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued.

It would, Mason suggested, provide an eternal answer to questions that plagued the convention as it pondered the presidency: Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?

Mason placed his faith in a rigorous system of checks and balances that was enforced, ultimately and definitively, by the power of the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach a president whose continued tenure threatened the republic, and of the United States Senate to remove the offending officeholder.

Impeachment was never meant to be about crimes and punishments. It was intended at the founding of the American experiment, and should be so understood today, as a remedy for the monarchical tendencies of men who answer Masons questions differently than did the Virginian and his compatriots.

Donald Trump is such a man.

In the spring of 2018, as the 45th president of the United States and his legal minions scrambled to limit the scope of questioning of the commander-in-chief by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump revealed himself. He insisted that the deputizing of a veteran lawman as an investigator of monumental concerns regarding manipulation of the electoral and governing processes by foreign powers was totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Trump claimed that he cooperated with the inquiry not out of respect for the laws of the land but because he chose to do so as one who claimed to have done nothing wrong. At the same time, Trump asserted that he retained an absolute right to pardon himself should the heat of official scrutiny grow too intense.

These were not the words of a Democrat or a Republican. They were monarchical words, uttered by a man whose tenure had strained even the most liberal interpretations of executive authority. Now, this man was asserting that he was above justice. And, yes, he was doing so as the man who, by virtue of his position, could commit the most extensive injustice.

These are the rough outlines of the constitutional crisis that the founders feared. Our contemporary media and political elites recognize its contours. They know the sickness is upon us. Yet, they choose, out of quivering fear and overwhelming incomprehension, to reject the constitutional remedy. After too many years of making too many apologies for an imperial presidency, too many of those who define our discourse have lost any real sense of the anti-royalist spirit of 76 that Jefferson asserted in his final letter should forever serve as the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

The author of the Declaration of Independence was a flawed man who can be criticized for missteps and misdeedsas can all of the founders. Yet Jefferson, a man of the world who had traveled more broadly than his revolutionary co-conspirators, was surely right to assert that ignorance could bind not just human beings but nations. If we do not recognize the threat posed by a president who imagines himself to be above the law, or by those who suggest that this mans tenure may not be interrupted by the subpoenas and the investigations and legal requirements that demand the respect of all other Americans, then surely we have abandoned the most basic premises of the American experiment.

The authors of this vital text refuse to accept so perilous a surrender. They seek to burst the chains of our contemporary superstitions regarding impeachment and to restore a proper understanding of its role in maintaining the right balance of American governance. Misguided people who imagine that liberty and justice for all can long survive in a circumstance where a president places himself above the law fret about the political consequences of addressing a constitutional crisis with a constitutional remedy. They foolishly imagine that it is better to wait a lawless presidency out, with faint hope for better results on some distant election day. They refuse to recognize that each failure to demand necessary accountability invites greater abuse and diminishes the prospect that accountability will ever be achieved. When human beings who are ailing receive prescriptions for curing medications and then refuse to take those medications, we are horrified because we know that these choices may lead to their deaths. What we must understand is that republics are similarly vulnerable. They, too, can die for lack of proper treatment in moments of emergency.

Ron Fein, John Bonifaz, and Ben Clements recognize our predicament, and they call out for us to address it with the courage of a nation that seeks to heal itself. They do not do this for purposes of politicsindeed, politicians for the most part fear impeachment. Nor do they do this for purposes of achieving poweras these authors are dissenters who have frequently sacrificed gain in order to assert constitutional certainties that they know to be true.