re: Nadler: You can't impeach president if voters won't support it

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What’s a high crime?

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Do you have a link or anything? Are you saying you need an actual criminal indictment or conviction as a prerequisite?

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The implication is that YOU know the facts and WE don’t. So why the need for more investigations/hearings? Just fricking tell us what you know.

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That requires you thinking a high crime or misdemeanor includes non-crimes. Which requires ignoring the meaning of the words at the time of its drafting. You, correctly, said that was the criteria that needed to be used.

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During the debates of the Constitutional Convention in July of 1787, the delegates twice voted in favor of the general proposition that the president should be removable for “malpractice or neglect of duty.” Many delegates spoke of a body of offenses outside the common law crimes for which presidents and other federal officials could be impeached, using terms such as “maladministration,” “corrupt administration,” “neglect of duty,” and “misconduct in office.” On August 20, 1787, the Committee on Detail reported to the convention that federal officers “shall be liable to impeachment and removal from office for neglect of duty, malversation, or corruption.” Despite the tenor of these earlier discussions in the convention, in its report of September 4, 1787, the Committee of Eleven proposed that the President be removable only on conviction of “treason or bribery.” On September 8, George Mason made a motion the effect of which was to restore the thrust of the general proposals previously assented to by adding “maladministration” as a third ground for impeachment. Madison objected to removal of a President “for any act which might be called a misdemesnor [sic],” observing that, “So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.” Mason withdrew “maladministration,” substituting “other high crimes and misdemeanors against the State.” The phrase “against the State” was later amended to “against the United States,” and then deleted altogether by the Committee on Style in the final draft of the Constitution. It is plain that Mason’s substitution of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in the face of objections by Madison and others to “maladministration” represented an effort to limit the reach of the original proposal. And although neither Mason nor anyone else at the Convention
offered any particular views on what “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” meant, evidence suggests that the words were intended to embrace at least some non-criminal conduct. Raoul Berger has argued that the phrase was a “technical term” derived from English practice, with which the Framers would have been familiar, and therefore that its technical meaning “furnishes the boundary of the [impeachment] power.” Among the various kinds of official misconduct that fell within the English usage of “high misdemeanors” were such non-criminal behavior as abuse of power, neglect of duty, encroachment on the prerogatives of Parliament, and betrayal of trust. Both Berger’s factual premise that all, or even very many, of the Framers were intimately
familiar with the details of English impeachment precedents, and his conclusion that the Framers
were thus conscious of having adopted the particulars of those precedents by reference through Mason’s amendment seem to us somewhat doubtful. Both premise and conclusion become still more doubtful when applied to the sixteen hundred ratifiers who debated and approved the Constitution in the state conventions. Berger is certainly correct, however, that many delegates to the Philadelphia and ratification conventions would have been sufficiently familiar with English constitutional history to recognize “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” as a phrase that embraced territory broader than indictable crime, but more restricted than mere poor performance in office

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Impeachment is not confined alone to acts which are forbidden by the Constitution or Federal statutes. The better sustained and modern view is that the provision for impeachment in the Constitution applies not only to high crimes and misdemeanors as those words were understood at common law but also acts which are not defined as criminal and made subject to indictment, but also to those which affect the public welfare. Thus, an official may be impeached for offenses of a political character and for gross betrayal of public interests. Also, for abuses or betrayal of trusts, for inexcusable negligence of duty, for the tyrannical abuse of power, or as one writer puts it, for a “breach of official duty by malfeasance or misfeasance, including conduct such as drunkenness when habitual, or in the performance of official duties, gross indecency, profanity, obscenity, or other language used in the discharge of an official function, which tends to bring the office into disrepute, or an abuse or reckless exercise of discretionary power as well as the breach of an official duty imposed by statute or common law.”

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Impeachment is the constitutionally specified means by which an official of the executive or judicial branch may be removed from office for misconduct. There has been considerable controversy about what constitutes an impeachable offense. At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates early on voted for "mal-practice and neglect of duty" as grounds for impeachment, but the Committee of Detail narrowed the basis to treason, bribery, and corruption, then deleting the last point. George Mason, who wanted the grounds much broader and similar to the earlier formulation, suggested "maladministration," but James Madison pointed out that this would destroy the President's independence and make him dependent on the Senate. Mason then suggested "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," which the Convention accepted.
Because "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" was a term of art used in English impeachments, a plausible reading supported by many scholars is that the grounds for impeachment can be not only the defined crimes of treason and bribery, but also other criminal or even noncriminal behavior amounting to a serious dereliction of duty. That interpretation is disputed, but it is agreed by virtually all that the impeachment remedy was to be used in only the most extreme situations, a position confirmed by the relatively few instances in which Congress has used the device.
The word "impeachment" is popularly used to indicate both the bringing of charges in the House and the Senate vote on removal from office. In the Constitution, however, the term refers only to the former. At the Convention, the delegates experimented with differing impeachment proceedings. As finally agreed, a majority vote of the House of Representatives is required to bring impeachment charges (Article I, Section 2, Clause 5), which are then tried before the Senate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6). Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict before an official can be removed. The President may not pardon a person who has been impeached (Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). If an official is impeached by the House and convicted by the requisite vote in the Senate, then Article I, Section 3, Clause 7, provides that the person convicted is further barred from any "Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." The convicted official also loses any possible federal pensions. With a few exceptions, those impeached and removed have generally faded into obscurity.
In The Federalist No. 64, John Jay argued that the threat of impeachment would encourage executive officers to perform their duties with honor, and, used as a last resort, impeachment itself would be effective to remove those who betray the interests of their country. Like the limitations on the offense of treason, the Framers placed particular grounds of impeachment in the Constitution because they wished to prevent impeachment from becoming a politicized offense, as it had been in England. Nonetheless, Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist No. 65, also warned that during impeachment proceedings, it would be difficult for Congress to act solely in the interests of the nation and resist political pressure to remove a popular official. The Framers believed that the Senate, elected by the state legislatures, would have the requisite independence needed to try impeachments. The Framers also mandated a supermajority requirement to militate against impeachments brought by the House for purely political reasons.

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"Impeachment is a political act, and you cannot impeach a president if the American people will not support it," Nadler told WNYC.

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What constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors?

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We have to hold a series of hearings

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