Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/66

 That interpretation is also most consistent with the structure of the Constitution. This is true in three respects.

First, as explained above, the Impeachment Clause restricts the consequences of impeachment to removal from office and disqualification from future federal officeholding. That speaks to the fundamental character of impeachment. In Justice Story's words, it is "a proceeding purely of a political nature. It is not so much designed to punish an offender, as to secure the state against gross official misdemeanors. It touches neither his person, nor his property; but simply divests him of his political capacity." Given that impeachment exists to address threats to the political system, applies only to political officials, and responds only by stripping political power, it makes sense to infer that "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" are offenses against the political system rather than indictable crimes.

Second, if impeachment were restricted to crimes, impeachment proceedings would be restricted to deciding whether the President had committed a specific crime. Such a view would create tension between the Impeachment Clause and other provisions of the Constitution. For example, the Double Jeopardy Clause protects against being tried twice for the same crime. Yet the Impeachment Clause contemplates that an official, once removed, can still face "Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law." It would be strange if the Framers forbade double jeopardy, yet allowed the President to be tried in court for crimes after Congress convicted him in a proceeding that necessarily (and exclusively) decided whether he was guilty of those very same crimes. That oddity is avoided only if impeachment proceedings are seen "in noncriminal terms," which occurs if impeachable offenses are understood as distinct from indictable crimes.

Finally, the Constitution was originally understood as limiting Congress's power to create a federal law of crimes. It would therefore be strange if the Framers restricted impeachment to criminal offenses, while denying Congress the ability to criminalize many forms of Presidential wrongdoing that they repeatedly described as requiring impeachment.

To set this point in context, the Constitution expressly authorizes Congress to criminalize only a handful of wrongful acts: "counterfeiting, piracy, 'offenses against the law of nations,' and crimes that occur within the military." Early Congresses did not tread far beyond that core category of crimes, and the Supreme Court took a narrow view of federal power to pass criminal statutes. It was