Impeachment Is Possible

Elizabeth Drew, who watched the House Judiciary Committee’s deliberation on impeaching Nixon decades ago, believes there are “valid charges to be brought” against the United States’ current president. Impeachment is possible and, she says, it’s urgent.

It’s not only that Republicans are increasingly upset with their party’s president (if he ever really belonged to a party at all), but that Trump’s abuses of power have snowballed into a provable “pattern of practice”. That kind of “pattern” is what the Judiciary looked for when trying to impeach Nixon. Further, under the terms of impeachment the president can be held accountable for the acts of his subordinates, which expands his list of offenses and brings the Russia collusion members of his administration may have been involved in within the committee’s purview.

“Even if Trump’s hand isn’t found in any proven collusion by his campaign aides or associates with associates of Vladimir Putin, or even Putin himself, Trump himself could be impeached for collusion.”

Drew finds Trump guilty of the following articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, accepting foreign emoluments, abuse of ethics rules, and lying to the public. His notoriously hidden tax returns could be brought in too—as could his past crimes against women. Drew seems to think that the question is not if Trump gets the boot, but when.