Reality Check: What The Founders Meant By 'High Crimes And Misdemeanors'
"Impeachment is a heavy word that's being thrown around lightly," John Avlon said, introducing a Reality Check segment.
"It's the mechanism set up to remove a president from office for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. Treason and bribery are clear enough, but 'other high crimes' is intentional, and to some, infuriatingly broad so things like abuse of power, corruption, selling out to foreign governments were covered. Alexander Hamilton described them as political offenses, writing the words in the Federalist Papers in all caps 'as they relate to injuries done to the society itself' --or as Gerald Ford put it in 1970, an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.
"That speaks more to the way impeachment has been misused as a partisan weapon rather than a clear, high bar the Founders intended. Put on your history nerd goggles as we go on a deep dive into notes from the Constitutional Convention to get a sense of the Founding Fathers' real vision of impeachment.