A new book, entitled The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump, is due out Tuesday that argues impeachment proceedings for Donald Trump should start immediately. The book is written by 3 veteran constitutional lawyers and suggests there is no reason to wait for the results of special counsel Mueller’s investigation. There are more than enough grounds to impeach Trump already.
Written by a trio of veteran constitutional attorneys, The Constitution Demands It argues that the time to talk about #impeachment is now, and offers a precise case against the president. In bookstores on August 14 and available for pre-order now, here: https://t.co/FKUkq9b8Eb
— FreeSpeechForPeople (@FSFP) August 11, 2018
The authors of the book, Ron Fein, John Bonifaz and Ben Clements, write:
President Donald Trump has been violating the Constitution since the moment he took the oath of office—and since then, the corruption, abuse of power, and abuse of public trust have only gotten worse.
All three authors work for Free Speech for People, which is a national non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 2010 by John Bonifaz and Jeffrey Clements. Fein, who is the legal director of the organization, told Newsweek:
A lot of people are under the misimpression that the only impeachable offenses are crimes for which one could be prosecuted and imprisoned, but emoluments are a perfect example of offenses that are impeachable that are not a prosecutable crime. Furthermore, it is not only not a crime, but it’s not part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The book, which is endorsed by Tom Steyer, the billionaire donor behind the Need To Impeach campaign, details 8 reasons for impeaching Donald Trump:
- Violating emoluments clause
- Conspiring to solicit and concealing illegal campaign assistance from a foreign power
- Obstructing justice
- Directing law enforcement to investigate political opponents
- Abusing the pardon power
- Advocating illegal violence
- Reckless endangerment by threatening nuclear war
- Undermining the freedom of the press
It also includes a bonus 9th chapter which covers “potential additional grounds”. These sound about right to me, including the possibility that there are even more than 8 grounds.
The alarming thing about this list is that some of these things have become so normalized that it is easy to forget just how serious they are. For example, we almost brush off Trump making threats of nuclear war against foreign countries on Twitter as “Trump just being Trump”. But when you stop to think about it, what he is really doing is endangering the entire population of the United States or even the entire world while he is on the toilet spontaneously tapping away at his phone.
The people of the United States deserves more than this — which is exactly what the founders were thinking when they wrote the Constitution.
