Thoughts on Impeachment from ICAP’s Joshua Geltzer

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will vote on articles of impeachment against President Trump. To make sense of the vote, check out these two recent articles on impeachment in The Atlantic by ICAP Executive Director Joshua Geltzer.

The first, “The System Was Blinking Red,” discusses how testimony before the House Intelligence Community made clear just how concerned public servants across the U.S. Government were with President Trump’s approach to Ukraine policy:

“What might have gotten lost in the day’s testimony is that these more ordinary officials were doing extraordinary things. Those included repeated threats to resign and repeated referrals to lawyers of possible violations of U.S. law by U.S. officials. This is not normal — not normal behavior by public servants, not normal disagreement within the policy-making process, not normal at all. To the contrary, this is a sign that inside the U.S. government, Trump’s improper bullying of Ukraine was setting off alarms — and the system was blinking red.”

The second, “The Legal Debate About Impeachment Is Over,” explains that all four legal scholars who testified before the House Judiciary Committee agreed on the core legal question before them:

“This was the legal question to be answered at yesterday’s hearing. This is the legal question that every member of the House Judiciary Committee will have to answer when they vote on whether to refer out of committee articles of impeachment. And this is the legal question that every member of the whole House will have to answer when they vote on whether to send to the Senate articles of impeachment for a trial there.

Indeed, this is the legal question underpinning it all: Do the facts, as alleged, constitute an impeachable offense?

On this, there was unanimity among yesterday’s four witnesses. On this, there was a clear, single answer to emerge. And that answer was yes.”