The Case for Impeachment: A staggering litany of lawlessness
When it comes to breaking laws and institutions, no other president even comes close.
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.
President Donald Trump’s second term has left the Declaration of Independence and Constitution on life support.
He openly and notoriously proclaims that the sole constraint on his power is his moral conscience — not the Constitution, not the law, not the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump’s impeachable lawlessness has become a way of life at the White House.
What other president has murdered with military force nearly 200 alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific without evidence, and is continuing the homicides predicated on the fantasy of self-defense?
What other president has threatened the death of 6,000 years of Iranian civilization through a criminal war of aggression in violation of the War Crimes Act of 1996 and international law?
Among other crimes against humanity in Iran, Trump presided over the murders of more than 120 elementary school students between the ages of 6 and 11 alongside their principal and teachers.
What other president has suppressed freedom of speech and association on an industrial scale to retaliate against universities, lawyers, journalists, and newspapers?
What other president has kidnapped with military force a foreign head of state, killing scores in the process?
What other president has militarized domestic law enforcement by concocting national emergencies divorced from reality in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis to deploy the National Guard?
What other president has auctioned his pardon power = as if he were a Sotheby’s auctioneer selling a Hieronymus Bosch painting?
If Trump is not removed from office, then the Constitution’s impeachment power will become a dead letter.
What other president has usurped the congressional power of the purse, including serial violations of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the Anti-Deficiency Act, and illegally invoked the International Economic Emergency Powers Act and companion statutes to impose exorbitant tariffs for political, noneconomic reasons to evade congressional oversight?
What other president has, by executive order, attempted to jettison our cherished constitutional right to birthright citizenship?
What other president has repeatedly flouted the orders of federal courts?
What other president has exhorted for the impeachment of judges who oppose his lawlessness?
What other president has exploited the powers of office for billions of dollars in personal or family enrichment indistinguishable from bribery or extortion?
What other president has refused to faithfully execute laws passed by Congress that he dislikes, for example, laws creating the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, various health or safety agencies or offices, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the TikTok ban, or the Presidential Records Act?
What other president has systematically brandished law enforcement to attack and harass political opponents denuded of any plausible legal justification, including James Comey, Letitia James, Lisa Cook, and Adam Schiff?
What other president has attempted to misuse the Judgment Fund to reward his political friends, many guilty of criminal misconduct, through collusive disputes or litigation and to bathe himself in immunity from IRS tax investigations?
And this is only the tip of the impeachment iceberg!
Trump has turned the Constitution into a museum piece and claimed the infinite unchecked power of a dictator.
Doubting Thomases who dismiss impeachment maintain that Trump has been impeached and acquitted twice already, and the impeachment would be futile unless and until Democrats capture control of the House and Senate in the midterms.
The argument is unconvincing and ignores the many high crimes and misdemeanors Trump has committed since he returned to the White House.
A clear and present danger
Trump’s previous impeachments were for serious — but isolated — abuses of his power: a notorious phone call in which he pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden in return for American arms, and the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Both should have resulted in his removal from office. But Trump 2.0 is even worse. He has turned the Constitution into a museum piece and claimed the infinite, unchecked power of a dictator.
Trump remains a clear and present danger. He is working to cancel or manipulate the midterm elections to keep Republicans in control of both chambers to head off investigations into his corrupt acts and avoid a third impeachment.
Trump has flirted with the Insurrection Act and related emergency statutes to justify dispatching the military to seize voting machines or paper ballots and to occupy voting places.
On Jan. 15, he mused, “We shouldn’t even have an election.”
If Trump is not removed from office, then the Constitution’s impeachment power will become a dead letter.
Trump is attempting to accomplish what the Confederate States of America failed to do in firing on Fort Sumter to destroy the Union and the Constitution.
Then, President Abraham Lincoln admonished in his second annual address to Congress, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, that last best hope on earth.”
Citizens and Congress in unity must awaken from their slumber and impeach Trump.
Bruce Fein is a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and the author of “Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy.” Ralph Nader is an attorney, consumer advocate, and the author of more than two dozen books, starting with his 1965 best-seller, “Unsafe at Any Speed.”
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