House Judiciary Committee Report: President Can Be Impeached for ‘Motives’ Without Breaking Law

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty

The House Judiciary Committee released a report Saturday in which it argued that a president may be impeached for “illegitimate motives” even if his actions are “legally permissible.”

The 52-page report, written by 20 members of the staff for the Democratic majority, attempts to provide a legal and constitutional basis for the Democrats’ ongoing effort to impeach the president.

The report states: “The question is not whether the President’s conduct could have resulted from permissible motives. It is whether the President’s real reasons, the ones in his mind at the time, were legitimate.”

That novel theory is only one of several questionable features of the report.

1. The report ignores all of the “expert” legal scholars who testified three days before. The report does not bother to cite any of the testimony from Wednesday’s lengthy hearing, with three witnesses called by Democrats and one called by Republicans. That suggests the report was written well in advance of the hearing. The report does cite published works by one of the witnesses, Micharl Gerhardt, but ignores those of his writings unhelpful to their case.

2. The report uses the same misquote used in the hearing, and by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The Democrat staff cite President Donald Trump as saying Article II of the Constitution means can do whatever I want as president.” As Breitbart News explained Friday, that is a misquote (backed by deceptively-edited video in the hearing), because Trump was talking specifically about his power to fire the Special Counsel (which he did not).

3. The report invents an absurdly broad standard for “bribery.” The report, backed by selective and misleading claims about the Framers’ intent, declares: “Impeachable bribery occurs when the President offers, solicits, or accepts something of personal value to influence his own official actions.” That standard would implicate every elected official in the United States, all of whom accept campaign contributions in return for policy promises.

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