Lawfare: It's time for Congress to open impeachment hearings

In 1833, Justice Joseph Story explained that impeachment is not limited to "crimes of a strictly legal character" but also "has a more enlarged operation, and reaches, what are aptly termed political offenses, growing out of personal misconduct or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests, various in their character, and so indefinable in their actual involutions, that it is almost impossible to provide systematically for them by positive law." This is a near-perfect description of Trump’s wide-ranging abuses and the challenge that now lies with Congress: the order that the positive law is unable to provide is now its to impose.


The author Ben Wittes was on with Chris Hayes earlier this evening.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/its-time-congress-needs-open-formal-impeachment-inquiry