Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/68

 exclusively to abuses perpetrated by federal officeholders. It is through impeachment proceedings that "a President is called to account for abusing powers that only a President possesses." The criminal law, in contrast, "sets a general standard of conduct that all must follow." It applies to all persons within its compass and ordinarily defines acts forbidden to everyone; in our legal tradition, the criminal code "does not address itself [expressly] to the abuses of presidential power."

Indeed, "the early Congresses—filled with Framers—didn't even try to create a body of criminal law addressing many of the specific abuses that motivated adoption of the Impeachment Clause in the first place." This partly reflects "a tacit judgment that it [did] not deem such a code necessary." But that is not the only explanation. The Constitution vests "the sole Power of Impeachment" in the House; it is therefore doubtful that a statute enacted by one Congress (and signed by the President) could bind the House at a later date. Moreover, any such effort to define and criminalize all impeachable offenses would quickly run aground. As Justice Story cautioned, impeachable offenses "are of so various and complex a character, so utterly incapable of being defined, or classified, that the task of positive legislation would be impracticable, if it were not almost absurd to attempt it."

There are also general characteristics of the criminal law that make criminality inappropriate as an essential element of impeachable conduct. For example, criminal law traditionally forbids acts, rather than failures to act, yet impeachable conduct "may include the serious failure to discharge the affirmative duties imposed on the President by the Constitution." In addition, unlike a criminal case focused on very specific conduct and nothing else, a Congressional impeachment proceeding may properly consider a broader course of conduct or scheme that tends to subvert constitutional government. Finally, the application of general criminal statutes to the President may raise constitutional issues that have no bearing on an impeachment proceeding, the whole point of which is to assess whether the President has abused power in ways requiring his removal from office. For all these reasons, "[a] requirement of criminality would be incompatible with the intent of the framers to provide a mechanism broad enough to maintain the integrity of constitutional