Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

We Need to Talk About Impeachment

Jonathan Bernstein's morning links.

May 12, 2017 at 1:51 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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I've been trying to avoid talking about impeachment of the president, but Thursday's events -- in which the president almost bragged about obstructing justice in firing FBI Director James Comey -- make it hard to avoid. The first article of impeachment adopted by the House Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon in 1974 was obstruction of justice, and he resigned before the full House could vote because new evidence appeared confirming that charge.

Could Donald Trump be impeached over firing Comey? That gets back to the old Gerald Ford comment: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."