significant efects of the conduct—un-
dermining the integrity of oice, disre-
gard of constitutional duties and oath
of oice, arrogation of power, abuse of
the governmental process, adverse im-
pact on the system of government.”
The challenge is to apply these ab-
stract standards to Trump’s alleged mis-
conduct. Any attempt to do so requires
an accurate determination of exactly
what Trump did, and many are hop-
ing that Mueller will provide that ac-
counting. As Pelosi told me, “Impeach-
ment doesn’t fit into the equation until
we hear what Robert Mueller says.”
But even some impeachment skeptics
are willing to establish markers for
Trump’s behavior that would not re-
quire findings from Mueller. The most
common of these appears to be the
firing of Mueller or of Rod Rosenstein,
the deputy attorney general, who su-
pervises Mueller’s work. Eric Swalwell,
a California Democrat who is a mem-
ber of the Judiciary Committee, told
me that he opposes impeachment at
this point, but that if the President de-
poses either man, it would be grounds
for starting proceedings: “That would
be encroaching on the independence
of the Justice Department.” Barney
Frank, the former congressman from
Massachusetts who was a key figure in
the Clinton debate in 1998, said that
he can imagine a scenario in which he
would support impeachment. “The
President has the power to issue par-
dons,” Frank told me. “But if it could
be proved that Trump promised peo-
ple pardons in order to persuade them
not to coöperate with Mueller, that
ofer would be an obstruction of jus-
tice, and it would be impeachable.”
Laurence Tribe told me that he would
regard some forms of misbehavior as
impeachable, such as “a pattern of abus-
ing the bully pulpit of the Presidency,
one of its most potent if informal pow-
ers—especially when amplified by so-
cial media—to stir division within the
electorate to the point of violence, to
give permission to white supremacists
to weaponize their hatred, and other-
wise to undermine the foundations of
our republic.”
As it happens, in recent years Con-
gress has embraced broad definitions
of what constitutes impeachable con-
duct, albeit in low-profile cases. Ap-
plying the standard of high crimes and
misdemeanors, the House of Repre-
sentatives has impeached two federal
judges. President George H. W. Bush
appointed Samuel Kent to the federal
bench in Galveston, Texas, in 1990.
There, female court employees com-
plained that Kent groped and harassed
them. In 2008, a federal grand jury
indicted the judge for abu-
sive sexual contact, and he
was convicted the following
year. The House moved to
impeach Kent, and added
charges in addition to those
for which he had been con-
victed, including lying about
sexual harassment he had
committed before he became
a judge. The House voted
unanimously in favor of three
articles of impeachment, and Kent re-
signed his judgeship before his trial in
the Senate. Michael Gerhardt told me,
“To the extent that there’s a question
about whether Trump actually engaged
in sexual assault or has lied about it
during the campaign, Kent arguably
provides a precedent supporting a con-
gressional judgment that sexual assault
may constitute a legitimate basis for
impeachment.”
The following year, Congress im-
peached Thomas Porteous, whom Bill
Clinton had appointed to the federal
bench in Louisiana, in 1994. Porteous
had declared personal bankruptcy in
2001, and during that process revealed
that he had close ties to a local bail
bondsman who was caught up in a
federal corruption investigation. Por-
teous was never charged with a crime,
but the disclosures about his situation
led to an investigation by the federal
judicial administrative oice, which
determined that Porteous had lied on
the financial-disclosure forms he had
filed in connection with his nomina-
tion. The House voted unanimously
to impeach him for “engaging in a pat-
tern of conduct that is incompatible
with the trust and confidence placed
in him as a federal judge,” and the Sen-
ate removed him from oice. As Ger-
hardt observes, “The gist of the case
against Porteous was that he lied about
his background in order to get the job.
The idea was that he defrauded the
Senate, by providing false information,in order to get confirmed for his judge-
ship.” Although Congress is under no
obligation to apply the same defini-
tion of “high crimes and misdemean-
ors” in every impeachment, Gerhardt
told me that “the collusion charge
against Trump is based on the same
idea of a direct connection—that he
engaged in misconduct in order to get
the job he holds.”
Nadler, for his part,
declines to set markers
for what might trigger
an impeachment investi-
gation if he assumes the
House Judiciary Com-
mittee chairmanship in
2019, although he con-
tinues to express indig-
nation at each new dis-
closure about Trump.
He denounced the President’s threats
against Mueller and introduced legis-
lation to protect the investigation by
the special counsel. He criticized the
firing of Andrew McCabe. He sought
an investigation of Cambridge Ana-
lytica for violating U.S. election regu-
lations. He called for a formal resolu-
tion of censure against Trump for his
remarks about Charlottesville. None of
these proposals went anywhere in the
Republican-controlled House.
Instead of planning for impeach-
ment, Nadler is thinking about the
kinds of oversight investigations he
might conduct if he is in control of the
committee. “We would want oversight
on what the Administration is doing
to civil liberties, to institutions, to dis-
credit the courts, to discredit the spe-
cial prosecutor, to attack the press, all
of these things,” he told me. “What are
you doing about staing levels of difer-
ent places? What are you doing about
the things that afect the ability of agen-
cies to do their jobs independent of
the political direction of the current
Administration?”
Still, the chance for Nadler to define
his legacy can never be far from his
thoughts. For decades, he and his fam-
ily have been regulars at a diner a few
blocks from their apartment on the
Upper West Side. When he is in New
York, Nadler stops in a few times a
week. Each time he does, the owner
greets him with the admonition “You
gotta impeach the bastard.”