Thread by @kyledcheney

JUST IN: The Judiciary Committee has released a staff report on the "Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment."

judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrat…

The report sharply refutes the notion that impeachment overturns the previous election:

"No President is entitled to persist in office
after committing 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors,' and no one who voted for him in the
last election is entitled to expect he will do so."

The report itself is dense, laden with citations from the Federalist Papers and the intention of the Founders -- but it's a historic document in that it fills out the *very* thin records of precedent for presidential impeachment.

judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrat…

Democrats are drawing an intentional visual comparison to the document that undergirded the Nixon impeachment:

https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/status/1203357916566376448

KEY PASSAGE: "A President who perverts his role as chief diplomat to serve private rather than public ends has unquestionably engaged in “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”— especially if he invited, rather than opposed, foreign interference in our politics. "

NEW: The Judiciary Committee's 55-page report -- the first of its kind since the panel's Nixon impeachment report -- and it includes updates to reflect the allegations against Trump.

Story w/ @dsamuelsohn

politico.com/news/2019/12/0…

They include:

-The House is akin to a grand jury; questions about due process are for the Senate trial.
-Impeachable offenses don't require criminal conduct.
-The founders considered abuse of a president's foreign policy power to be the gravest offenses

politico.com/news/2019/12/0…

It's not a barnburner or a riveting read, but the report builds on a thin body of congressional precedent for impeachment. In that sense, we're likely to rely on it as an impeachment guide well past Trump.

politico.com/news/2019/12/0…