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 power to destroy opponents or manipulate elections is a President who rejects democracy itself. Given the Framers’ paramount concern for the integrity of the democratic process, and their fear that a President might seek to corrupt the Electoral College, there can be no doubt that President Trump committed “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in unleashing a violent mob on the Capitol while Congress met to count Electoral College votes. Indeed, this timing was no coincidence: President Trump’s acts of incitement on January 6, 2021 were inextricably linked to a broader course of conduct aimed at delegitimizing the election results, obstructing and subverting the electoral process, and sowing discord and confusion in the Nation’s democratic system.

Yet another aspect of President Trump’s conduct confirms that it ranks as impeachable: the existential threat it posed to the separation of powers. The Framers knew that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” To protect liberty, they wrote a Constitution that creates a system of checks and balances within the federal government. Some of those rules are expressly enumerated in our founding charter; others are implied from its structure or from traditions of inter-branch relations. As our history makes clear, a President may be subject to impeachment for conduct that usurps and destroys core constitutional prerogatives of Congress or the Judiciary. From that premise, it is obvious that the President commits an impeachable offense if he engages in conduct, such as inciting a violent attack upon the Capitol, that places legislators in mortal peril and forces them to hurriedly evacuate the legislative chamber. The separation of powers cannot function if the President incites violence against the Congress—and if the Congress must proceed in fear of a President who has demonstrated his willingness to endanger its very security.

Of course, it was not only Congress whose security President Trump put at risk on January 6, 2021. His own Vice President was presiding over the Joint Session and was endangered. President Trump’s acts of incitement also harmed the national security of the United States—both by virtue of the intelligence risks resulting from a physical intrusion of the Capitol and by virtue of the signal it sent to the Nation’s adversaries, foreign and domestic. This, too, supports the conclusion that President Trump’s misconduct rises to the level of an impeachable offense: “Impeachment for betrayal of the Nation’s interest—and especially for betrayal of national security—was hardly exotic to the Framers.”

For all these reasons, the conduct charged in the Article of Impeachment constitutes a “high Crime and Misdemeanor” under the Constitution. “There comes a point at which a president can properly be impeached for his statements” —and that point is indisputably reached when the President incites an assault on the legislature amid the constitutional process for the transfer of power. Both as an abusive exercise of presidential power, and as an instance of gross misconduct