incited a mob to violently besiege the Capitol while the House, Senate, and Vice President met in Joint Session to count the electoral votes. The President’s conduct undermined our national security, threatened the integrity of our democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government. Further, President Trump’s acts of incitement on January 6, 2021 followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the election results. As noted, those efforts include, but are not limited to, a call in which he urged the Georgia’s Secretary of State, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened state officials if they failed to accede to his demands.
As constitutional commentators from across the ideological spectrum have recognized, this conduct is unquestionably impeachable.[1] A President who incites violence against the Congress and three of the highest-level federal officials—and does so while Congress counts the electoral votes in an election that he lost—imperils the constitutional system. This offense is precisely the sort of conduct warranting impeachment and removal from office.
To the Framers, that conclusion would be self-evident. Their worldview was shaped by a study of classical history, as well as a lived experience of resistance and revolution. From that background emerged an exquisite sensitivity to the paired dangers of the mob and the demagogue, which they associated with “the threat of civil disorder and the early assumption of power by a dictator.”[2] Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 gave that concern heightened salience at the Constitutional Convention, where the Framers—fearful of unruly mobs—sought to restrain excesses of popular passion.[3] James Madison, in particular, worked hard “to avoid the fate of those ‘ancient and modern confederacies,’ which he believed had succumbed to rule by demagogues and mobs.”[4] Several of the Federalist Papers similarly warned against demagogues who would aggrandize themselves, and threaten the young Republic, by stirring popular fury and delusion.[5] The generation that came of age in the eighteenth century was familiar with leaders who incited angry mobs and threatened constitutional stability. They would have immediately recognized President
- ↑ See e.g. Frank O. Bowman, III, The Constitutional Case for Impeaching Donald Trump (Again), Just Security (Jan. 9, 2021); Dorf on Law (@dorfonlaw), Twitter (Jan. 6, 2021, 3:10 PM); Norman Eisen, The riot happened because the Senate acquitted Trump, Wash Post (Jan. 8, 2021); Noah Feldman, I Testified at Trump’s Last Impeachment. Impeach Him Again, Bloomberg (Jan. 7, 2021); David Landau and Rosalind Dixon, The 25th Amendment Can Remove Trump, but We Shouldn’t Stop There, N. Y. Times (Jan. 7, 2021); Stanford Law’s Michael McConnell on the 25th Amendment and Trump, Stanford Law School (Jan. 7, 2021); Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Constitutional and Moral Imperative of Immediate Impeachment, The Bulwark (Jan. 8, 2021); David Priess & Jack Goldsmith, Can Trump Be Stopped?, Lawfare (Jan. 7, 2021); John Podhoretz, Donald Trump Should Be Impeached and Removed from Office Tomorrow, Commentary Magazine (Jan. 6, 2021); Melissa De Witte and Sharon Driscoll, Stanford Scholars React to Capitol Hill Takeover, Stanford News (Jan. 6, 2021); Ilya Somin, A Qualified Defense of Impeaching Trump Again, Reason (Jan. 6, 2021); Cass Sunstein, Does the 25th Amendment Apply to Trump? Quite Possibly, Bloomberg (Jan. 7, 2021); Laurence H. Tribe & Joshua Matz, Yes, Congress should impeach Trump before he leaves office, The Washington Post (Jan. 8, 2021); Keith E. Whittington, The conservative case for impeaching Trump now, Wash. Post (Jan. 7, 2021); ACLU Again Calls for Impeachment of President Trump, ACLU Press Release (Jan. 10, 2021) (https://www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-again-calls-impeachment-president-trump).
- ↑ See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 282 (1967).
- ↑ See Jeffrey Rosen, American is Living James Madison’s Nightmare, The Atlantic (October 2018).
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers: No. 1.
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