Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/47

 To start with common law: At the time of the Constitutional Convention, bribery was well understood in Anglo-American law to encompass offering, soliciting, or accepting bribes. In 1716, for example, William Hawkins defined bribery in an influential treatise as "the receiving or offering of any undue reward, by or to any person whatsoever … in order to incline him to do a thing against the known rules of honesty and integrity." This description of the offense was echoed many times over the following decades. In a renowned bribery case involving the alleged solicitation of bribes, Lord Mansfield agreed that "[w]herever it is a crime to take, it is a crime to give: they are reciprocal." Two years later, William Blackstone confirmed that "taking bribes is punished," just as bribery is punishable for "those who offer a bribe, though not taken." Soliciting a bribe—even if it is not accepted—thus qualified as bribery at common law. Indeed, it was clear under the common law that "the attempt is a crime; it is complete on his side who offers it."

The Framers adopted that principle into the Constitution. As Judge John Noonan explains, the drafting history of the Impeachment Clause demonstrates that "'Bribery' was read both actively and passively, including the chief magistrate bribing someone and being bribed." Many scholars of Presidential impeachment have reached the same conclusion. Impeachable "Bribery" thus covers— inter alia—the offer, solicitation, or acceptance of something of personal value by the President to influence his own official actions.

This conclusion draws still more support from a closely related part of the common law. In the late-17th century, "bribery" was a relatively new offense, and was understood as overlapping with the more ancient common law crime of "extortion." "Extortion," in turn, was defined as the "abuse of