Three leading constitutional scholars told Congress that Donald Trump had committed impeachable offences, as the House of Representatives judiciary committee launched a new phase of the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.
Pamela Karlan from Stanford Law School, Noah Feldman from Harvard Law School and Michael Gerhardt from the University of North Carolina said the US president’s efforts to get his Ukrainian counterpart to open investigations into his political rival Joe Biden were a clear abuse of power that merited impeachment.
“If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created a Constitution, including impeachment, to protect against,” Professor Gerhardt said. “If Congress concludes they’re going to give a pass to the president here . . . every other president will say, OK, I can do the same thing, and the boundaries will just evaporate.”