National Review Calls Out ‘Embarrassing’ Pro-Trump Arguments in Scathing Op-Ed: ‘Impeachment Doesn’t Require a Crime’

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A very common refrain among loyal defenders of President Donald Trump amid the current impeachment proceedings is that, because there was no crime committed, he cannot be removed from office. It is a rather shockingly simple defense that parades one’s middle school level of understanding of the Consitution or is a willfully misleading take designed to misinform the misinformable.

Enter conservative thought leader National Review into this strange legal defense phenomenon, to publish a remarkably banal take in the form of a scathing Op-Ed that rather embarrasses Trump’s loyal defenders. It’s banal not because of National Review’s editorial wisdom, but because we sadly find ourselves in a political moment when even the banalest takes need to be said.

Editors behind the column say of this “no-crime” defense: “Instead of sticking to the most defensible case for a Senate acquittal of Trump, Republicans from the president on down are making arguments that range from the implausible to the embarrassing.”

The op-ed features a remarkably effective, if not on-the-nose, headline “Impeachment Doesn’t Require a Crime” which features the following nut graf:

Hence the claim now being advanced half-heartedly by Republicans that presidents cannot be impeached for any abuse of power unless that abuse took the form of a criminal violation of a statute. The consensus of those who have studied this question is to the contrary. Jonathan Turley, the Republicans’ star witness in the House hearings about the constitutional issues raised by impeachment, has repudiated this view. Attorney General William Barr has in the past denied it. The Founding-era debates about impeachment are clear that Congress was to be able to remove a president from office if he had exercised his legal powers in an abusive way. One example that came up during those debates: What if the president tacitly encouraged a crime and then pardoned the perpetrator? The pardon power is arguably unreviewable, and certainly very nearly so. It was left to the judgment of a majority of the House and a supermajority of the Senate, as always under the supervision of the voters, whether a president’s conduct had rendered his continuation in office intolerable.

The National Review editors don’t so much chide Republicans for what seems a foolhardy errand of alleging the “no-crime” defense, but rather it arrives at a rather thoughtful suggestion that Republicans would be better served by arguing that President Trump’s behavior, while objectionable, should be left to voters.

Attempts to impeach presidents have thus frequently combined charges of crimes with charges of non-criminal abuses. A categorical denial of the latter class of charge would do violence to the Constitution and one of its checks on presidential misconduct. Republicans would be better off arguing that in this case the president’s behavior, while objectionable, should be left, as scheduled, to the judgment of the voters directly — an argument that already has the support of most voters in polls and accords with Senate Republicans’ actual beliefs. There is no need for constitutional contortions.

Please read the entire and thoughtful op-ed here.