practice, President Trump would do what the Supreme Court has clearly warned against: place vital constitutional judgments about exercises of the impeachment power "in the hands of the same [President] that the impeachment process is meant to regulate."[1] Thus, while President Trump merely erred in asserting that the impeachment inquiry was unfounded, partisan, and "illegitimate," he moved from error to "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in declaring that his self-determined innocence somehow justifies his scorched-earth obstruction campaign.
Throughout our history, impeachments—particularly of Presidents—have been rare. Moreover, in Judge Walter Nixon's case, the Supreme Court made clear its extreme wariness of intruding on powers of impeachment entrusted solely to Congress. As a result, impeachment proceedings against a President will inevitably raise questions of constitutional law that have not been definitively, specifically resolved by judicial precedent or past practice of the House. This leaves room for interbranch negotiation. But it does not allow the President to seize on specious arguments, cobble them together, and use them in an effort to justify the unjustifiable: a Presidential direction that all House subpoenas be entirely defied under all circumstances. Such unyielding Presidential obstruction of an impeachment inquiry is plainly wrong. When the House investigates impeachable offenses, the President cannot cover up his misconduct by holding hostage all evidence contained within the Executive Branch. The Judiciary Committee made this clear in President Nixon's case and reaffirms that principle today.
Simply put, there are lines that a President cannot cross in an impeachment inquiry. Those lines exist to ensure that the Impeachment Clause can serve its fundamental purpose as a safeguard for the people of the United States. In comprehensively obstructing this House impeachment inquiry, President Trump crossed every one of these lines. He did so without any valid cause or excuse. He must therefore be impeached, lest future Presidents follow his example and persist in corruption, oppression, and abuse of power with little risk of discovery or accountability.
It has been suggested that the House cannot impeach President Trump for obstruction of Congress without seeking judicial enforcement of the subpoenas that he has ordered be defied. This claim is mistaken as a matter of constitutional law, precedent, and common sense.
As already explained, the Constitution vests the House—rather than the President or Judiciary—with "the sole Power of Impeachment." That "sole Power" includes the investigatory powers that the House has invoked in serving subpoenas as part of the current impeachment inquiry. This Committee therefore concluded in President Nixon's case that it would frustrate the constitutional plan for the House to depend entirely on the Judiciary to enforce subpoenas in impeachment proceedings.[2] That would risk making the House subservient to courts in matters where the
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