If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States
will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century
Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder. -- Barbara Jordan
The Honorable Barbara Jordan
25 July 1974, House Judiciary Committee (
transcript and audio)
. . .
Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."
Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now.
My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men."¹ And that's what we're talking about. In other words,
from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn't say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers -- and the judges the same person.
We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive. . .
This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We're told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.
The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.
We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States. There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States. . .
Justice Story: "Impeachment is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations." . . .
The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their public trust." . . .
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." . . .
If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder. . .
"swollen with power and grown tyrannical"The executive branch under the rule of Bush and Cheney has "swollen with power and grown tyrannical." Congress has been derelict in their duty to stand against the subversion.
Unlike the Nixon administration's actions in Watergate, where "cover up" was the hallmark, Bush and Cheney are usurping our will and violating our Constitution in plain sight. Phrases like "encroachments of the executive" or "betray their public trust" fail to capture their blatant and aggressive appropriation of Unconstitutional power.
On the question of the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, we are long past the need for investigation.
We have our evidence. The case for impeachment is
complete.
It is time to formally accuse (introduce articles). Calls for hearings to present the evidence are appropriate. Calls for more evidence and investigation are nothing but an attempt to escape the unavoidable truth.Refusing to accuse at this point says one thing: "What we know now is not enough to impeach."
Refusing to accuse effectively nullifies the powerful and simple case we have.
Refusing to accuse is tantamount to exoneration.
If exoneration is their intention, Members of the House should do it honestly and tell us why the nation should not call Bush and Cheney into account for. . .
- War crimes committed at Gitmo under color of law at the direction of the White House. (At least three years of operations that our own Supreme Court declared to be violations of Geneva and our own law)
- Terrorizing us with threats of "Mushroom Clouds over our cities in 45 minutes." (No amount of "stretching" can support the notion that Iraq was capable of dropping a nuclear bomb anywhere within the United States -- not in 45 minutes; not in a year; not in 5 years)
- Their criminal domestic surveillance program, for which they make the laughable and Unconstitutional claim that unitary authoritarian power gives them a "get out of jail free" card.
