Law professor blows up Trump defense team’s 2 most ‘egregious constitutional claims’: They ‘have impeachment exactly backwards’

Writing for Just Security on Friday, Frank O. Bowman III, a legal expert and professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, detailed two of the “more egregious constitutional claims” put forth by Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team in a trial brief filed last week.

The 171-page brief, which reminded one law professor of the president’s public “tantrums,” outlined the defense team’s case against two articles of impeachment filed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. According to Bowman, the defense brief includes two glaring errors that give more credence to the House charges against the president: 1 — that the president can only be impeached “for violations of ‘known and established law,’” and 2 — that “impeachment for ‘abuse of power’ is ‘made-up,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unconstitutional.”

On the first point, Bowman writes the defense brief intimates that “the law violated must be criminal” in order to be impeachable. Bowman notes that Alan Dershowitz, one of the president’s impeachment defense attorneys, has repeatedly made, and will continue to make, the case that “impeachment requires proof of crime or ‘crime-like conduct.’” Continue reading.