Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/53

 Yet obstruction of justice did not exhaust President Nixon's corrupt abuse of power. He was also accused of manipulating federal agencies to injure his opponents, aid his friends, gain personal political benefits, and violate the constitutional rights of American citizens. For instance, President Nixon improperly attempted to cause income tax audits of his perceived political adversaries; directed the FBI and Secret Service to engage in targeted (and unlawful) surveillance; and formed a secret investigative unit within the White House—financed with campaign contributions—that utilized CIA resources in its illegal covert activities. In explaining this additional article of impeachment, the House Judiciary Committee stated that President Nixon's conduct was "undertaken for his personal political advantage and not in furtherance of any valid national policy objective." His abuses of executive power were thus "seriously incompatible with our system of constitutional government" and warranted removal from office.

With the benefit of hindsight, the House's decision to impeach President Johnson is best understood in a similar frame. Scholars now largely agree that President Johnson's impeachment was motivated not by violations of the Tenure of Office Act, but on his illegitimate use of power to undermine Reconstruction and subordinate African-Americans following the Civil War. In that period, fundamental questions about the nature and future of the Union stood unanswered. Congress therefore passed a series of laws to "reconstruct the former Confederate states into political entities in which black Americans enjoyed constitutional protections." This program, however, faced an unyielding enemy in President Johnson, who declared that "white men alone must manage the south." Convinced that political control by African-Americans would cause a "relapse into barbarism," President Johnson vetoed civil rights laws; when Congress overrode him, he refused to enforce those laws. The results were disastrous. As Annette Gordon-Reed writes, "it would be impossible to exaggerate how devastating it was to have a man who affirmatively hated black people in charge of the program that was designed to settle the terms of their existence in post-Civil War America." Congress tried to compromise with the President, but to no avail. A majority of the House finally determined that President Johnson posed a clear and present danger to the Nation if allowed to remain in office.

Rather than directly target President Johnson's faithless execution of the laws, and his illegitimate motives in wielding power, the House resorted to charges based on the Tenure of Office