12 Time February 3, 2020
TheBrief News
BeneaTh The heaTed parTisan language
surrounding President Donald Trump’s im-
peachment trial lies a constitutional question:
Can a President be removed from office even
if he hasn’t committed a crime? That’s the key
question facing the Senate now that its for-
mal trial began in earnest on Jan. 21. The fate
of Trump’s presidency and the carefully cali-
brated balance of power between the White
House and Congress hang on the answer.
House Democrats say Trump twisted
U.S. foreign policy to try to stay in office,
withholding defense and diplomatic aid to
Ukraine to get the country to announce in-
vestigations into his political rival Joe Biden.
Trump’s lawyers dispute that framing of what
happened—but regardless of the President’s
motivations, they say, there is no law saying
anything he did was illegal.
“House Democrats’ newly invented
‘abuse of power’ theory collapses at the
threshold because it fails to allege any
violation of law whatsoever,” Trump’s
lawyers wrote in a brief filed on Jan. 20,
arguing that the impeachment trial must
concern only the legality of the President’s
actions, not the appropriateness of the
possible reasons he undertook them.
In other words, Trump’s lawyers argue,
his pressure on Ukraine fell within the
presidency’s powers to make foreignWORLD RECORDS
So close, yet so far
Guinness World Records officials could not confirm if a Jan. 20 attempt to set a world record
for the largest gathering of twins, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, had succeeded, after too many twins
arrived, overwhelming the strict registration process. Here, more near misses. —Ciara NugentDOMI-NOOOOOOO
In the town of Nidda,
Germany, a 2018
attempt to break the
record for the most
minidominoes to
fall in one go failed
when a fly landed
on one of the tiny
pieces, triggering
a premature
chain reaction.MISSTEP
British endurance
runner Amy Hughes,
who ran 520 miles
on a treadmill in
one week in 2017,
lost out on a world
record after officials
said her boyfriend,
who monitored
the bid, wasn’t an
independent witness.EATING CROW
Cooks used 2,200 lb.
of ostrich meat in
a bid to make the
world’s largest ostrich
sandwich at a food
festival in Tehran in- But a crowd
began eating the
evidence before
Guinness officials
could measure it.
NEWS
TICKER
U.N. condemns
hacking of Jeff
Bezos’ phoneAfter a number used
by Saudi Crown
Prince Mohammed
bin Salman was
linked to a hack
into the phone of
Washington Post
owner Jeff Bezos—a
charge Saudi Arabia
denies—U.N. experts
said Jan. 22 that the
hacking was meant
to “influence, if not
silence,” the paper,
which had employed
murdered journalist
Jamal Khashoggi.Populists
exit Norway’s
governmentOn Jan. 20, Norway’s
populist Progress Party
pulled out of the ruling
coalition after opposing
the repatriation from
Syria of a Norwegian
woman with suspected
ISIS ties and her two
children. The remain-
ing groups in Prime
Minister Erna Solberg’s
center-right coalition
will stay in power as a
minority government.Change in U.S.
school-lunch
rulesThe Department of
Agriculture announced
on Jan. 17 a proposal
to change school-meal
rules championed
by former first lady
Michelle Obama.
The revisions, which
officials say are meant
to reduce waste, would
allow cafeterias to
serve kids fewer fruits
and vegetables.policy, whether he was doing it to root
out corruption, as Trump has said, or for
political advantage, as Democrats allege.
The other side flatly rejects this reading
of the Constitution. The “assertion that im-
peachable offenses must involve criminal
conduct is refuted by two centuries of prece-
dent and, if accepted, would have intolerable
consequences,” House impeachment manag-
ers wrote in response on Jan. 21.
The debate among constitutional experts
over what constitutes an impeachable of-
fense is robust. But the idea that impeach-
able conduct need not be an actual crime is
well established. In the Federalist papers,
Alexander Hamilton wrote that impeachment
should apply to cases involving “the abuse or
violation of some public trust” and “injuries
done immediately to the society itself.”
Congress has sometimes interpreted the
Constitution in this way in the modern era
too. Even Trump’s lawyer Alan Dershowitz
sounded a different tune in 1998, during
President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, argu-
ing at that time that “if you have somebody
who completely corrupts the office of [the]
President and who abuses trust and who
poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t
need a technical crime” to be impeached. As
Trump’s trial began, Dershowitz tweeted that
he wants to “retract” that previous statement.
Fortunately for Trump, no Congress in
the country’s history ever explicitly outlawed
using the power of the presidency to help win
re-election. Now Senators will have to decide
whether, in the end, that’s all that matters.
—Tessa BerensonGOOD QUESTION
Can a President be
removed from office if
there wasn’t a crime?