“The argument that only criminal offenses are impeachable has died a thousand deaths in the writings of all the experts on the subject, but it staggers on like a vengeful zombie,” Tribe explained. “In fact, there is no evidence that the phrase ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ was understood in the 1780s to mean indictable crimes.”
He explained that there was virtually no federal criminal law even in place when the U.S. Constitution was authored by the founding fathers in 1787. he went on to quote former Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph, who argued on July 20, 1787, that impeachment powers were important for cases exactly like Trump’s.
“Executive will have great opportunitys (sic) of abusing his power,” Tribe quoted Randolph.
“Even more famously, Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65 defined ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as ‘those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.’
