Why President Trump has left us with no choice but to remove him from office, as explained by Supreme Court lawyer and former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal.
This book is for the few Americans still open to persuasion ... Katyal’s brief primer, shorter than it would appear given the hefty appendix of widely circulated key documents, offers as concise and evenhanded a summation of the accusations currently weighing on the president (and the nation) as one can find between two covers. Read this if undecided, and as promised you will be far better prepared to offer a thoughtful verdict. It even offers those already armed with firm convictions a list of useful rejoinders to the most oft-heard critiques of Trump’s impeachment, while also pointing out a few weaknesses in the case against the president ... The book, when read comprehensively and not merely ravaged for political talking points, makes a persuasive case. Offering no new evidence or argument, but instead a prosecutor’s summation of information publicly revealed since September, Katyal lays bare what any honest observer should already know: The president deployed the power of his office in pursuit of personal political gain ... [Katyal] knows that an impeachable act need not be a literal crime that exists on the books, yet he reflexively yearns throughout these pages for the simplicity of being able to cite Trump’s violation of a specific federal statute...Legal expertise in this matter clouds the issue, because an impeachment trial in the Senate ultimately employs no standard of proof beyond the body’s determination that it is time for a president to go. This is politics, not law, which is why the founders placed the impeachment process in the legislature’s hands and not the courts' ... Katyal looks to today’s laws and evidentiary standards, but on such a weighty constitutional issue it is better to seek guidance from those who knew the matter best. The Constitution’s authors would not have applied a yardstick or a veil when considering presidential malfeasance. They’d have pictured a face instead, asking if the deeds under discussion were ones their ideal of a virtuous president, George Washington, would ever have done.
Neal Katyal makes an unimpeachable case, concise but comprehensive, for impeachment ... This book is nothing if not up to date. Published in November 2019, it refers to many events and documents released as recently as September. To be sure, much of the material has already been in the public domain, but Katyal with his legal mind analyzes it in a novel way ... The president, according to Katyal, has committed impeachable offenses, but justice will not be served unless the American people demand that Sections 3 and 9 of the Constitution’s Article 1 are implemented. If Americans read this short book, they may do just that.
... a thoughtful and well-researched polemic that advocates Trump’s removal. Among other things, it provides a highly readable history on the origins and evolution of impeachment, and offers answers to questions that surround the process ... But like the current impeachment hearings, its capacity to persuade will probably be limited. By definition, impeachment is political. These days, it is also highly partisan ... Katyal convincingly argues that impeachable conduct, in the parlance of the constitution – should be understood to mean offenses that violate the public trust ... Politically, Katyal can appear tone deaf. At the outset, he proclaims, 'I am not a partisan' – despite a record of donating to the Democratic National Committee and the Obama and Clinton campaigns. He has contributed more than $12,000 over the past decade to political causes. Said differently, being a law professor does not immunize one from being a partisan ... Katyal also fails to grapple with just how we have reached this historic point. He acknowledges that America today is historically reminiscent of the 1850s, and yet he does not delve into how we got there.
