• Professor David Mayer is the faculty advisor to the Federalist Society.

        Ann Coulter's brilliant book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1998), should be required reading for members of the House Judiciary Committee as they consider articles for impeachment against President Clinton.  The book convincingly shows why Clinton so richly deserves to be the first president in U.S. history to be forcibly removed from office.
        Coulter, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights and the legal affairs correspondent for Human Events magazine, in addition to being an effective political commentator, is also a good scholar of history and constitutional law.  Her insightful discussion of the meaning of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors"--the best discussion of the meaning of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution I've seen anywhere--draws upon all the relevant sources, including the English legal precedents with which the Framers were familiar, the debates at the Constitutional Convention and various state ratifying conventions, the Federalist Papers, and the history of impeachment proceedings, from the earliest impeachments of federal judges, the impeachment and trial of President Andrew Johnson, and finally the important precedents set by the near-impeachment of President Nixon in 1974.
        Coulter persuasively argues that the standard for impeachment is broad but not imprecise.  As she points out, the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" has nothing to do with the criminal law; indeed, there is no such thing as a "high crime" or a "high misdeamor" in the criminal law.  Citing distinguished constitutional scholar Raoul Berger, whose classic study of impeachment concluded that the phrase "appears to be words of art confined to impeachments," Coulter shows how the Constitution's framers transformed a standard used to hold English royal officials accountable for their abuses of power into a standard appropriate for a constitutional republic.  Impeachment was the device chosen by the Framers to hold
accountable all high officers of the U.S. government--including the President--for misconduct in office.
        Coulter emphasizes that an impeachable offense is not merely "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be"--the infamous formulation suggested by Gerald Ford when he was a Congressman (a statement he would come to regret when he was appointed Nixon's vice-president).  Rather, she notes, the Framers chose the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" to designate specific types of conduct that would warrant removal from office.  In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described impeachable conduct as "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."  Consequently, she notes, one of the punishments for impeachment is disbarment from ever holding an office of "trust" or "honor" with the United States.  Hamilton had characterized impeachable offenses as "political," but he did not mean partisan, Coulter adds.  The president cannot be impeached, for example, "for issuing executive orders that are strongly opposed by New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis."  Rather, she notes, "high crimes and misdemeanors are political" in the sense that they "relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself," as Hamilton described them.  Policy matters are "off the table," but personal misconduct is not.
        Drawing upon the history of Congressional impeachment proceedings, Coulter ably sketches out the full range of offenses which warrant impeachment.  From 1789 to the present day, there have been 58 documented House impeachment investigations of federal judges alone, and there have been 14 impeachment trials in the Senate, including one of a president (Andrew Johnson's, in 1868).  The first impeachment conviction rendered by the U.S. Senate was for the high crime and misdemeanor of alcoholism: District Judge John Pickering of New Hampshire was removed in 1804 for being chronically intoxicated and thus unfit to serve on the bench.  In addition to treason and bribery (the other specific
crimes mentioned in Article II, Section 4), federal judges have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office for a variety of offenses, including tax evasion, conspiracy to solicit a bribe, and making false statements to a grand jury.
        In response to Clinton defenders who might assert that the standard for impeaching judges ought to be different than that for presidents because of judges' life tenure, Coulter persuasively argues that the Constitution specifies only one standard--"treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors--for all high U.S. officials, presidents and judges alike.  She could add that, in light of the enormous power wielded by modern presidents, a president ought to be held to a higher standard than that applicable to federal judges.  Not only does the president embody the entire executive authority of the government of the United States--with a broad grant of powers given him by the Constitution in Article II--but modern presidents exercise powers far beyond what the Framers of the Constitution intended (for example, their war power and use of the veto).  Impeachment is the one device found in the Constitution that permits Congress to check presidential abuse of power.
        Coulter's case against Bill Clinton is devastating.  She ably summarizes the mountain of evidence showing that Clinton's presidency is the most corrupt in American history.  In so doing, she also draws a close comparison to Watergate and the grounds used by the House Judiciary Committee when it drew up articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon in 1974.  The comparison is telling: Nixon resigned from office in the face of allegations that are trivial in comparison to the various ways Clinton has abused the powers of his office.
        Consider just the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and the Paula Jones civil suit with which it is closely related.  Unlike Nixon, Clinton committed the underlying acts himself--sex with an intern in the Oval Office, as well as offensive sexual conduct toward a state government employee when he was governor of Arkansas--but, like Nixon, he employed the powers of his office to cover up evidence of those acts.  Bill Clinton has not only lied, as Nixon did with regard to the Watergate break-in (claiming it had been thoroughly investigated when it was not), but he has committed perjury, lying under oath both in the Jones deposition and in his testimony to the federal grand jury.  Moreover, he conspired with others (chiefly
Monica Lewinsky and his secretary, Betty Currie) to obstruct justice by, among other things, attempting to get them to also lie under oath and to conceal evidence.
        Clinton's behavior in the Jones-Lewinsky matters alone warrants his impeachment and removal from office, as Coulter shows.  Not only has Clinton subverted the civil justice system through his perjury--thus acting contrary to his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed--but by his underlying conduct with Ms. Lewinsky, Clinton has demonstrated a total lack of good judgment and a blatant disrespect for the office of the presidency, which he has used as merely a tool for sexual gratification.  "Nixon eventually resigned in shame; Clinton's legacy is that he has no shame, no sense of duty or obligation to the country, and no concern for his own reputation," Coulter observes, adding that "No one believes he's not guilty, except the usual 30 percent of people who remain willfully ignorant on every subject."
        Even worse is the way Clinton's own lack of integrity has, "like a cancer," Coulter notes, "infected the nation."  By refusing to resign--to "go gracefully," or "as gracefully as is possible under the circumstances"--Clinton has "dragged the whole country into a public debate about the indefensible. . . . The line of defense shifts away from protests that the president is innocent to charges that the accusers have bad motives. (Even if their accusations happen to be true.)  The cost of not impeaching him is to see Clintonesque arguments become standard political dialectic."
        Coulter's analysis of the Clinton presidency isn't limited to the Jones-Lewinsky matters, however; she presents a comprehensive account of the full, sordid and shameless history of this administration.  These other matters (which may soon become the subject of a second referral from Ken Starr's Office of Independent Counsel to the Congress, as they involve investigations that the first Starr Report describes as "nearing completion"), might not implicate Clinton as directly as his actions in the Jones-Lewinsky cover-up do, but--under Watergate standards--raise even more
serious impeachable offenses.  As summarized by Coulter, Richard Nixon's actions--called "contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government" in the 1974 impeachment articles--consisted of, exactly, "one presidential lie, one invocation of presidential privilege, and zero criminal offenses."  He was almost impeached, and forced to resign, because he (appropriately so) was held responsible for the actions of his subordinates, who broke into the Democratic National headquarters in the Watergate office building and then used the powers of government to cover up that crime.  Apart from Nixon's lie to the public and his invocation of executive privilege, all the charges and accusations against Nixon relied on the actions of his subordinates, which he allegedly condoned, acquiesced in, or failed to prevent.  Indeed, as Coulter notes, the Rodino Report in 1974 enthusiastically endorsed the notion that the president is to be held responsible for the actions of his subordinates through impeachment.  By this standard, Clinton is--and should be--in deep trouble.
        Coulter divides Clinton's other "high crimes and misdemeanors" into three categories.  Under "Abuse of Power," she details the so-called "Travelgate" scandal, which involved abuse of the powers of the FBI, the Justice Department, and the IRS to get "dirt" on Billy Dale and other employees of the White House Travel Office, to provide political cover for their firing and replacement by one of Clinton's Hollywood friends, Harry Thomason; "Filegate," the "bureaucratic snafu" that resulted in the illegal collection in the White House of raw FBI files on nearly a thousand persons; and the use of the IRS to audit "enemies" of the Clinton administration.
        Under her second category, "Obstruction of Justice," she discusses Whitewater, which she notes concerns "two very simple things: stealing and lying--stealing from the taxpayers and lying to prosecutors, judges, and juries."  The significance of Whitewater is the use of the power of the White House to obstruct investigation into a fraudulent "failed land deal," of which Ken Starr's investigation thus far has led to the convictions or plea agreements of 14 people, including the Clintons' partners in crime, James and Susan McDougal, and ex-Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker.  Coulter also discusses related White House cover-ups involving the pay-off of Webster Hubbell and the death of Deputy Counsel Vince Foster--a cover-up not of how he died (which Ken Starr has established was indeed a suicide), but of what he was working on in his White House office, Whitewater and the Travel Office firings, which may have revealed evidence of presidential corruption and abuse of power.
        Finally, in the section entitled "Corruption," Coulter discusses what many commentators might regard as the most serious abuses of power by the Clinton administration: illegal Democratic fund-raising schemes, including the infamous "White House coffees," "Wampumgate" (Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt's attempt to extort from a Chippewa Indian tribe a hefty donation to the DNC, in return for a government casino license), and the Chinese money scandal.  The latter matter, which Coulter colorfully dubs "The Manchurian Candidate" scenario, has the potential of raising the presidential impeachment stakes by introducing evidence of bribery as well as treason--thus giving Clinton the opportunity to claim as his legacy outdoing Richard Nixon, in giving Congress the full array of possible impeachable offenses.  Treason and bribery are distinct possibilities, given the degree to which President Clinton's authorization of transfer of vital missile technology to China--in exchange for campaign contributions both from the Red Chinese and the Loral Space and Communications company--may have compromised national security.  Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the Space Subcommittee, has described it as "the worst betrayal of America's national security interests since the Rosenbergs" gave nuclear weapon secrets to the Soviet Union.  As Coulter notes, "Selling national security for campaign donations is treasonous.  If true this is the biggest scandal of the Clinton presidency."
        As Coulter's book demonstrates, a key contrast between the Nixon and Clinton presidencies is that Nixon's abuses of power were limited to one underlying act of wrongdoing (the Watergate break-in), while various acts of wrongdoing pervade the Clinton administration.  Indeed, it is ironic that Clinton has benefitted from the fact that corruption is so rampant throughout his administration that neither the President's critics, nor the news media, nor the American public, have been able to focus on one matter, as they did with Nixon and Watergate in 1974.  The Lewinsky scandal, finally, has forced Congress to initiate an impeachment inquiry.  Those who (unjustifiably) dismiss that scandal as "just about sex" are in for a rude awakening when the full, sordid history of the Clinton presidency finally receives Congressional attention,
as it must, in the coming months.
        As Coulter sums up, "A president who is so lacking in virtue that a V-chip is required to discuss his conduct in office surely warrants the impeachment remedy"--removal from office and disqualification to hold an enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.  "A president who is merely incompetent or neglectful--as the president would have us believe from his own explanations for the endless series of corrupt acts, abuses, and obstructions that have occurred on his watch--deserves the same: removal from office."  Bill Clinton, quite simply, is unfit to be president of the United States.