Thread by @StephenBright

Day2 @AdamSchiff : When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor known to have scoffed and private at the principles of...

...liberty, when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity to join in the cry of danger to liberty, to take every opportunity of embarrassing the general government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of...

..the day; it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion, that he might ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. Those words were written by Alexander Hamilton in a letter to president George Washington at the height of the panic of 1792...#

Another: Hamilton was responding to sentiments relayed to Washington as he traveled the country that America in the face of that crisis might descend from a republican form of government plunging instead into that of monarchy. The framers of the constitution, worried then, as...

...we worry today, that a leader might come to power not to carry out the will of the people that he was elected to represent, but to pursue his own interests. They fear that a president would subvert our democracy by abusing the awesome power of his office for his own personal..

...personal or political gain. And so they devised a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to combat, impeachment. As centuries have passed, our founders achieved an almost mythical character. We are aware of their flaws, certainly some very painful & pronounced indeed...

... And yet when it came to the drafting of a new system of government never seen before and with no guarantee it would succeed, we cannot help but be in awe of their genius, their [inaudible 00:04:46] even, vindicated time and time again.

Still and maybe because of their...

...brilliance and the brilliance of their words, we find year after year it more difficult to imagine them as human beings. This is no less true of Alexander Hamilton, not withstanding his recent return to celebrity. But they were human beings. They understood human frailties ...

...even as they exhibited them. They could appreciate just as we can, how power can corrupt. And even as we struggle to understand how the framers might have responded to presidential misconduct of the kind and character that we are here to try, we should not imagine for one..

...moment that they lacked basic common sense or refused to apply it ourselves.

They knew what it was like to live under a despot and they risked their lives to be free of it. They knew they were creating enormously powerful executive and they knew they needed to constrain it...

...They did not intend for the power of impeachment to be used frequently or over mere matters of policy, but they put it in the constitution for a reason. For a man who would subvert the interest of the nation to pursue his own interests. For a man who would seek to ...

...perpetuate himself in office by inviting foreign interference and cheating an election. For a man who would be disdainful of [inaudible 00:06:10] ignoring or defeating the other branches of government and their co-equal powers. For a man who believed that the constitution...

...gave him the right to do anything he wanted and practiced in the art of deception. For a man who believed that he was above the law and beholden to no one. For a man in short who would be a King. We are here today in this hallowed chamber undertaking this solemn action...

...because...Trump...has acted precisely as Hamilton & his contemporaries feared...Trump solicited foreign interference in our...elections abusing the power of his office to seek help from abroad to improve his reelection prospects at home. And when he was caught, he used the...

...powers of that office to obstruct investigation into his own misconduct... His scheme was undertaken for a simple but corrupt reason to help him win reelection in 2020...the effect of his scheme was to undermine our free & fair elections & to put our national security at risk.

If not...convicted in Senate & removed from office...Trump’s abuse of his office & obstruction of Congress will permanently alter balance of power among branches of gov inviting future presidents to operate as if beyond reach of accountability, congressional oversight, & the law.

It’s up to you to be the tribunal that Hamilton envisioned. It’s up to you to show the American people & yourselves that his confidence & that of the other founders was rightly placed. The Constitution entrusts you to the responsibility of acting as impartial jurors. To hold a...

...fair and thorough trial and to weigh the evidence before you, no matter what your party affiliation or your vote in the previous election or the next, our duty is to the constitution and to the rule of law.

The founders...recognized there’ll be times during the trial that ...

..that you may long to return to the business of the Senate. The American people look forward to the same. But not before you decide what kind of democracy that you believe we ought to be. And what the American people have a right to expect in the conduct of their president.

...But that will be for you to decide. With the weight of history upon you and as President Kennedy once said, a good conscience you’re only sure reward. In drafting our constitution, the framers designed a new and untested form of government. It would be based on free & fair..

...elections to ensure that our political leaders would be chosen democratically and by citizens of our country alone. Having broken free from a king with unbridled authority, who often placed his own interests above that of the people, the framers established a structure that...

...would guarantee that the chief executive’s power flowed only from his obligation to the people, rather than from a sovereign whose power was conferred on him by divine right. In this new architecture, no branch of government or individual would predominate over another.

In Article One, we deal with the first evil which the framers wished to guard against...cases in which a president corruptly misused the power otherwise bestowed on him to secure a personal reward. Guarding against a president who undertakes official acts with the corrupt ...

...motive of helping himself is that the heart of the impeachment power. As one scholar explained, the President’s duty to faithfully execute the law requires that he undertakes actions only when motivated in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest....

...Efforts to withhold official acts for personal gain countermand the President’s sacred oath and therefore constitute impeachable behavior as it was conceived of by the framers.

In Article Two, we also deal with a second evil contemplated by the founders, who made it clear ...

...that the president ought not operate beyond the limits placed on him by legislative and judicial branches. Impeachment was warranted for a president who usurped the power of the constitution that was not granted to him, such as to defy Congress the right to determine the ...

...propriety, the scope, and the nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own misconduct... the framers fashioned a powerful chief executive, but not one beyond accountability of law. When a president wields power in ways that are inappropriate and seek to extinguish the ...

...the rights of the Congress, he exceeds the power of his constitutional authority and violates the limits placed on his conduct. Obstruction of a separate and coequal branch of government for the purposes of covering up an abuse of power not only implies a corrupt intent, ...

...but also demonstrates a remarkable antipathy towards the balance of power contemplated and enshrined in our constitution. It is a betrayal of the President’s sacred oath of office and of his duty to put the country before himself.

Note: I love the historical content woven in ...