House Democrats are pushing ahead with a formal inquiry into impeaching President Donald Trump, spurred on by reports that Trump tried to persuade the Ukrainian government to open an investigation of former vice president — and Democratic presidential candidate — Joe Biden and his son.
The announcement seemed long overdue to many. When the Ukraine news broke a few days earlier, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted that the "bigger national scandal" was no longer the president's behavior but "the Democratic Party's refusal to impeach him for it." Lawyers George Conway and Neal Katyal insisted, in a Washington Post op-ed, that "it is high time for Congress to do its duty."
One House member asked, "If impeachment isn't for this, why is impeachment in the Constitution?" Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren announced that "Congress is complicit" if it refused to do its "constitutional duty" to impeach.
But as alarming as the allegations are — that Trump tried to use U.S. military aid as a cudgel to get Ukraine to help him politically — impeachment is still not required. Even now, there remains a narrow (albeit shrinking) space for a constitutionally conscientious legislator to refrain from impeaching Trump, and the House would not necessarily be failing to do its "constitutional duty" if it did not pass articles of impeachment.
The language of the Constitution is discretionary, not mandatory. The House "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment." The language is framed this way for a reason: The House is empowered to impeach an officer of the government, including the president, if it discovers "high crimes and misdemeanors," but it might choose to react differently. The point is not that the House should feel free to ignore abuses of office — but simply that impeachment is not the only way to address them.
The House's own guidebook on rules and precedents emphasizes that the impeachment power is designed to be a remedy for certain grave ills in the body politic. One important question, then, is whether the country suffers grave ills (in the last presidential impeachment, of Bill Clinton, many critics doubted that the Republican House majority satisfactorily answered that question). If those are identified, that leaves the issue of whether impeachment is a useful remedy.
The House might conclude that a president has committed impeachable offenses, but it may not believe that impeachment and removal are in the nation's best interest. An impeachment inquiry will help reveal what, if any, misconduct has occurred and how serious that might be, but it will require further political judgment to decide how to respond.
Through his own actions, Trump has strengthened the case for impeachment as justified and necessary, but there remains some room for doubt.