Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/52

 for obstruction of justice and the other for using Presidential power to target, harass, and surveil his political opponents. These articles demonstrate the second way in which a President can abuse power: by acting with improper motives.

This understanding of impeachable abuse of power is rooted in the Constitution's text, which commands the President to "faithfully execute" the law. At minimum, that duty requires Presidents "to exercise their power only when it is motivated in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest." A President can thus be removed for exercising power with a corrupt purpose, even if his action would otherwise be permissible. As Iredell explained at the North Carolina ratifying convention, "the president would be liable to impeachments [if] he had … acted from some corrupt motive or other," or if he was "willfully abusing his trust." Madison made a similar point at Virginia's ratifying convention. There, he observed that the President could be impeached for abuse of the pardon power if there are "grounds to believe" he has used it to "shelter" persons with whom he is connected "in any suspicious manner." Such a pardon would technically be within the President's authority under Article II of the Constitution, but it would rank as an impeachable abuse of power because it arose from the forbidden purpose of obstructing justice. To the Framers, it was dangerous for officials to exceed their constitutional power, or to transgress legal limits, but it was equally dangerous (perhaps more so) for officials to conceal corrupt or illegitimate objectives behind superficially valid acts.

Again, President Nixon's case is instructive. After individuals associated with his campaign committee committed crimes to promote his reelection, he used the full powers of his office as part of a scheme to obstruct justice. Among many other wrongful acts, President Nixon dangled pardons to influence key witnesses, told a senior aide to have the CIA stop an FBI investigation into Watergate, meddled with Justice Department immunity decisions, and conveyed secret law enforcement information to suspects. Even if some of this conduct was formally within the scope of President Nixon's authority as head of the Executive Branch, it was undertaken with illegitimate motives. The House Judiciary Committee therefore included it within an article of impeachment charging him with obstruction of justice. Indeed, following President Nixon's resignation and the discovery of additional evidence concerning obstruction, all eleven members of the Committee who had originally voted against that article joined a statement affirming that "we were prepared to vote for his impeachment on proposed Article I had he not resigned his office." Of course, several decades later, obstruction of justice was also the basis for an article of impeachment against President Clinton, though his conduct did not involve official acts.