How to Talk About Impeachment

Last week, during a town hall in Marietta, Georgia, Senator Jon Ossoff told a constituent supportive of impeaching and removing President Donald Trump, “There is no doubt that this president’s conduct has already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment by the United States House of Representatives,” and “the only way to achieve what you want to achieve is to have a majority in the United States House of Representatives and … believe me, I’m working on it every single day.” 

Conservative outlets, eager to take some heat off Trump, quickly pounced on Ossoff’s comments. The Wall Street Journal editorial board argued, “Mr. Ossoff would do better to ask why, with Mr. Trump declining already in the polls, Democrats are even less popular? Could it be that voters see that Democrats haven’t learned anything from their November defeat and are again defining themselves merely by their hatred of Donald Trump?” 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, during a Sunday CNN interview, was asked if he agreed with Ossoff. Schumer avoided a direct answer. “President Trump is violating the rule of law in every way,” he acknowledged, but “two years is too far away to predict” what might happen with impeachment.  

Schumer doesn’t deserve another pile-on. He has reason to be risk-averse. For Democrats to take back the Senate in 2026, they must win in at least three states that Trump won. Swing voters in red states largely want help with their cost of living and probably aren’t interested in much impeachment talk. 

Yet there is a fundamental illogic in Schumer’s two-step. If a president is “violating the rule of law in every way,” what is the case for not impeaching?  

According to the Journal editorial board, the argument against impeachment is that impeachment would “die in the Senate, further defining impeachment down.” But failure in the Senate is not what would define impeachment down. Crassly political, illegitimate articles would define impeachment down. A strong case for conviction that fails to win a two-thirds Senate vote would only define down those who voted to acquit. 

Because Schumer’s answer doesn’t put the impeachment question to bed, it will continue to be asked. What’s a better answer that doesn’t expose Democrats to charges of being crassly political?  

It’s not that complicated.  

First, keep economic concerns at the center: We already have reason to believe Donald Trump is inflicting needless economic harm on average Americans while corruptly enriching himself, his family, and his friends. 

Ossoff, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year in the purple state of Georgia, hammered Trump for “grift and kleptocracy” during a recent MSNBC interview, connecting to the economic reality most people are experiencing without mentioning impeachment. Anticipating a contest against Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ossoff charged, “Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidate to challenge me for that Senate seat in Georgia is executing magnificently timed stock trades around these tariff announcements while my constituents in Georgia are seeing their 401(k)s get absolutely clobbered.” 

But, if you are accusing the president of grift and kleptocracy, the impeachment question will often follow. Democrats may not need to lead with the impeachment argument, but they still need an answer when asked that makes sense. 

So second, show that Democrats are not the ones injecting politics into the oversight process: Despite evidence of flagrant corruption, the Republican-controlled Congress Is not performing any meaningful oversight of the executive branch. 

It just so happens that there is a lot of evidence of corrupt behavior in broad daylight.  

The New York Times this week summed up the sordid state of affairs: 

Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has opened lucrative new pathways for him to cash in on his power, whether through his social media company or new overseas real estate deals. But none of the Trump family’s other business endeavors pose conflicts of interest that compare to those that have emerged since the birth of World Liberty.  

The firm, largely owned by a Trump family corporate entity, has erased centuries-old presidential norms, eviscerating the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in a manner without precedent in modern American history.  

Mr. Trump is now not only a major crypto dealer; he is also the industry’s top policy maker. So far in his second term, Mr. Trump has leveraged his presidential powers in ways that have benefited the industry — and in some cases his own company — even though he had spent years deriding crypto as a haven for drug dealers and scammers. 

And Thursday’s New York Times quoted the manager of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business as saying a fund backed by Abu Dhabi would be making a $2 billion business deal with the Trump firm’s digital currency. 

In early March, Senator Chris Murphy gave a floor speech listing “20 or so examples of corrupt behavior in the first six weeks of the Trump presidency,” including several cases of conflicts of interest involving Elon Musk, several cases of Trump and administration officials making money off of merchandise sales, and the use of the White House to negotiate an agreement between Saudi Arabia’s LVI Golf and the PGA Tour because “the Saudi golf league plays tournaments at Trump’s courses in the United States.” 

Murphy also flagged a shocking executive order from Trump suspending enforcement of the anti-bribery Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. One month later, Trump’s Treasury Department announced the suspension of enforcement of the anti-money laundering Corporate Transparency Act.  

Trump’s tariff policies—which have upended the economy and imposed new taxes on imported goods—also raise concerns about potential corruption. Senator Elizabeth Warren and several dozen congressional Democrats recently sent a letter to Trump administration officials noting that Trump has begun doling out tariff exemptions to—and boosting the stock prices of—corporations with easy access to him, and “the off-and-on nature of President Trump’s tariffs opens the door to rampant insider trading.” The letter also calls attention to what looks like a classic fox-guarding-the-henhouse move: the naming of United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to simultaneously serve as the Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics 

Despite all the smoke suggesting an inferno of corruption, prejudged guilt makes the impeachment look politically motivated. 

That’s why, third and finally, Democrats should stress that they will not impeach on Day One or embark on a partisan fishing expedition: We will perform our oversight obligations, investigate where there is evidence of potential crimes and violations of oath of office, and impeach if the evidence demands it. Otherwise, accountability for transgressions is not possible.  

The Supreme Court left us with little choice but to impeach if we have evidence of a crime. Several of the above examples of suspicious activity involve official acts. Last year, the Court decreed that the President has “presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” which, in effect, leaves the impeachment process as the only way to hold a president accountable for official acts that violate the Constitution or the law.  

A first-term argument against impeachment—that the ultimate accountability would happen at the ballot box—also doesn’t fly now since we are in Trump’s second term. Congressional impeachment is it. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial lectures Democrats not to define themselves “merely by their hatred of Donald Trump.” Such a charge would only stick if there were no obvious reason to pursue an impeachment investigation. Yet, we are drowning in reasons. 

The Journal should be more concerned that Republicans are defining themselves merely by Donald Trump, who is getting more and more unhinged and less and less popular by the day. One could even make the case that impeachment and removal could help Republicans by elevating Vice President J.D. Vance to the presidency and allowing the GOP to shed the Trump albatross. (Trump would only get removed by a two-thirds Senate vote if his job approval completely cratered with voters, including Republicans.) 

Democrats should define themselves as advocates for a stable economy, opponents of corruption, and stalwart defenders of the Constitution and the rule of law. If all that leads to impeachment, so be it.  

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