The Impeachment Report: The House Intelligence Committee's Report on the Trump-Ukraine Investigation, with the House Republicans' Rebuttal
Brand: Hot Books
Categories: Books, Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government



Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
ISBN-13: 978-1510759695
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1510759697
Publisher: Hot Books
Print length: 480 pages
Publication date: December 24, 2019
subtitle: Paperback – December 24, 2019
author: U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Alan Dershowitz
review: Editorial Reviews About the Author The United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), also known as the House Intelligence Committee, is a committee of the United States House of Representatives, currently chaired by Adam Schiff. It is the primary committee in the U.S. House of Representatives charged with the oversight of the United States Intelligence Community. Alan Dershowitz is one of the most famous and celebrated lawyers in America. He was the youngest full professor in Harvard Law School history, where he is now the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus. Dershowitz is the author of numerous bestselling books, including the New York Times bestseller The Case Against Impeaching Trump. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION HAMILTON’S NIGHTMARE By Alan Dershowitz Alexander Hamilton warned that in the context of impeaching a president, “the greatest danger [is] that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” He worried that impeachment “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.” In order to avoid these dangers, and assure that no president could be impeached without broad bipartisan support, the framers of our constitution deliberately made it difficult to impeach and remove a duly elected president based on one party having a temporary majority. They imposed four daunting prerequisites—barriers—to impeachment, and another even more daunting barrier to removal (a two-thirds supermajority). To be found guilty (Hamilton twice used the word “guilt” in discussion impeachment) of an impeachable offense, a president must have committed “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” If he did not commit at least one of those designated offenses, he could not constitutionally be impeached, regardless of how bad a president he was in the eyes of a majority of the House of Representatives. Even if a president committed one of the specified offenses, Congress retained the discretion not to impeach him if his offenses did not rise to the level of abuse of office. In other words, commission of one of the designated offenses was a necessary but not sufficient condition for impeachment. Abuse of office, coupled with a designated crime, would be both necessary and sufficient, but abuse of office, without a designated offense, would not be enough to impeach. The words chosen by the framers have meanings that were well understood at the time. Treason is defined in the constitution. Bribery had a long common-law meaning. Both are serious high crimes. When the framers modified...