Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/87

 the danger of foreign Influence recurs." In Federalist No. 68, Hamilton cautioned that the "most deadly adversaries of republican government" may come "chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils." The Framers sought to guard against this threat in the Impeachment Clause. If a President succumbed to temptation, placing his own personal interests above our national security and commitment to domestic self-governance, he faced impeachment and removal from his position of power.

Betrayal of national security was not an abstraction to the Framers, who had just waged a war for independence and knew the peril of corrupt foreign entanglements. "Foreign powers," warned Elbridge Gerry, "will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expense to influence them." In explaining why the Constitution required an impeachment option, Madison argued that a President "might betray his trust to foreign powers." Benjamin Franklin, in turn, referenced the Prince of Orange, who had reneged on a military treaty with France under suspicious circumstances, inciting "the most violent animosities and contentions" in Dutch politics. These and other Framers made clear that impeachment was a safeguard against Presidents who betrayed vital national interests through plots with foreign powers. The President's broad authority in conducting foreign affairs makes it more important, not less, that he display unswerving loyalty to the United States. "Accordingly, where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House ... A President who perverts his role as chief diplomat to serve private rather than public ends has unquestionably engaged in 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors'—especially if he invited, rather than opposed, foreign interference in our politics."

This last point speaks to a distinct but related fear: that Presidents would improperly use the vast power of their office to ensure their own re-election. William Davie saw impeachment as "an essential security for the good behaviour of the Executive," who might otherwise spare "no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected." George Mason agreed that the threat of electoral treachery "furnished a peculiar reason in favor of impeachments whilst in office": "Shall the man who has practised corruption & by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment, by repeating his guilt?" Gouverneur Morris later added that "the Executive ought