The Case for Impeachment: Congress must act now
The evidence that Trump has committed 'high crimes' is overwhelming.
This essay is part of a series called ‘The Case for Impeachment,’ which illuminates how Donald Trump has trampled the rule of law and is a clear and present danger to the republic.
The Constitution is under attack, not from a foreign adversary but from the president of the United States.
The framers of our Constitution understood that the greatest threats to our democracy would not come from outside forces. They feared something else: a president who would abuse the powers of office, place himself above the law, and create tyranny.
That is why they included in our Constitution the power and duty of impeachment.
Donald Trump presents the gravest threat our democracy has faced in modern times.
Overwhelming evidence
Yet Congress continues to dither, failing to exercise the one and only power the Constitution provides to protect us from that threat: the power of impeachment.
The question before Congress is not whether Americans agree on every policy dispute of the Trump presidency. The question is whether Congress will continue to stand by and do nothing while Trump repeatedly tramples on the Constitution, disregards the rule of law, and abuses public power for private enrichment and political vendettas at the expense of the American people.
The evidence is overwhelming.
Trump has repeatedly flouted constitutional limits on executive power. He has launched military operations without congressional authorization, despite the Constitution’s clear command that Congress holds the power to declare war.
He has treated the First Amendment as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a constitutional guarantee. He has threatened journalists. He has targeted protesters and condoned the murder of American citizens by ICE agents.
Trump has retaliated against universities, law firms, advocacy organizations, and political opponents for speech and viewpoints that he dislikes. He has threatened the execution of members of Congress.
He has attacked judges who ruled against him, fueled threats of violence against members of the judiciary, and repeatedly signaled that compliance with court orders is optional when those orders interfere with his personal or political objectives.
Trump has transformed federal law enforcement and administrative agencies into instruments of political power. He has deployed public institutions — designed to serve the American people — to reward allies, punish critics, and advance his personal and political interests, and he has repeatedly directed the Department of Justice to pursue baseless criminal cases against innocent people he perceives as personal enemies.
Rampant corruption
He has engaged in rampant corruption and personal enrichment on a historically unprecedented scale. He has treated the Oval Office as a profit-making enterprise, misusing the position of the presidency to enrich himself by more than $4 billion, while lining the pockets of his family and friends at public expense. The Constitution’s Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses were designed to ensure that presidents serve the public interest, not their own financial interests, but Trump violates them daily.
He has challenged our constitutionally guaranteed birthright citizenship. He has unleashed ICE as a private army to terrorize our communities, strip people of their due process rights, imprison them, and remove them from the country under cruel and illegal circumstances. Hundreds of thousands of people — including children and people who are medically fragile, elderly, or disabled — have suffered abuse, violence, and neglect because of Trump’s inhumane and unlawful mass deportation and detention machine.
Congress cannot wait until democracy has fully broken down before acting.
Each of these actions alone constitutes a “high crime” warranting impeachment. Taken together, they reveal something even more dangerous: a pattern of conduct aimed at concentrating power in the hands of a single individual while weakening the institutions designed to hold that power accountable.
This is exactly why the framers included impeachment in the Constitution. They understood that elections alone cannot protect a republic from a president determined to abuse power while in office.
Congress cannot wait until democracy has fully broken down before acting. Impeachment is a preventive remedy. It exists to stop dangerous abuses of power before they become permanent.
A sworn oath
When a president repeatedly violates constitutional boundaries, undermines democratic institutions, attacks fundamental rights, and places himself above the law, Congress has a duty to act. Failure to do so does not merely weaken one constitutional provision. It weakens the entire system of checks and balances upon which our republic depends.
Members of Congress swear an oath not to a president, a party, or a political movement. They swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. With a handful of exceptions, every single member of Congress is in grave violation of that duty by failing to demand and support Trump’s prompt impeachment.
History will not judge kindly those members of Congress who, regardless of party, for their own political reasons, fail to fulfill their constitutional responsibility when confronted with a president who attacked our democracy.
The Constitution provides a remedy for presidential lawlessness. Congress must use it.
John C. Bonifaz is the president and co-founder of Free Speech For People. Ben Clements is the chairman and senior legal advisor of Free Speech For People and a former federal prosecutor. Courtney Hostetler is Free Speech For People’s legal director. Free Speech For People is a national nonprofit legal advocacy organization dedicated to defending our democracy and our Constitution. The organization is leading a nationwide campaign to impeach and remove Donald Trump from public office at www.impeachtrumpagain.org where more than 1.1 million people have signed on in support.
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