1 min readNov 1, 2019
- For a president to get a foreign power to act for the sake of any personal agenda is an abuse of power that rises to a “high crime.”
- Precedents have consequences for the present. Are you familiar with the process the Republicans — through Kenneth Starr — used to impeach President Clinton? He started out investigating a land deal in Arkansas that involved Bill Clinton and his wife but took place years before he was elected president. President Clinton was impeached for (supposedly) lying under oath about the exact nature of a consensual sexual relationship with an adult woman. He insisted that oral sex and copulating are not the same thing and that the word “sex,” unqualified, as in, ‘Did you have sex with her?’, conveys the latter, not the former. That is at a minimum plausibly true. Yet, the Republicans impeached him based on the fact that he answered “No.” to that question when in fact a form of oral sex had transpired. That was President Clinton’s “high crime.”