The Case For Impeaching Trump

by Elizabeth Holtzman

"Elizabeth Holtzman has always been the first and the bravest, the smartest and most trusted. She is the expert we need to deal with an accidental President who got there as a serial sexual harasser, a candidate who lost the popular vote, and an unsuccessful businessman who was born on third base and thinks he hit a home run. Now what? Ask Liz!"—Gloria Steinem

In the era of Donald Trump, collusion, detention of immigrants, and fake news, it is important to hear what Elizabeth Holtzman has to say. She has been a principled leader and a persistent voice for equality and accountability since she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress in 1973, which she remained for forty-two years. But she sees American democratic ideals, and the rule of law in the United States, eroding under President Trump.

And as a member of the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon, and one of the members of the Homeland Security advisory council who resigned in protest of President Donald Trump’s policy of separating families at the border, former Congresswoman Holtzman knows that of which she

“President Donald Trump threatens our democracy. He lies, attacks our constitution, assaults the press, and obstructs justice. He causes unfathomable damage. The Constitution has a remedy for presidents who commit ‘great and dangerous offenses’: impeachment.

A fair, lawful, bipartisan impeachment inquiry into President Trump means getting to the bottom of things. It means analyzing with a clear head and heart what President Trump has done and what the law requires.

Impeaching a president is a grave undertaking. The compassionate and diverse America I know demands we get ready to do it.”

The Case for Impeaching Trump establishes the requirements for impeachment as set out by the Constitution and proves that President Trump’s actions have already met those requirements. Holtzman makes the definitive, constitutional case that Trump can be impeached—and the process should start now.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Us Presidents

160 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book came out before the current impeachment hearing so it's definitely old news and it's nothing I hadn't heard before but Holtzman put the argument together beautifully and does a great job of getting the reader up to speed as of January 2019.

[James Mc Donald · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most frustrating reviews I’ve tried to articulate in reading about the effort/justification to remove Donald Trump from the White House because previously, I felt the author earned one of the more remarkable leadership roles as she was a member of Congress. I think anybody that has/had the leadership skills to motivate a large enough segment of the American population to earn the right to represent them is pretty remarkable because they earned the right to be a part of our government as it’s an achievement not obtained by very many as that appointed authority is validated by American citizens who voted that person into office.

Even so, I don’t agree with much of congresswoman's views except for the fact I found her critical comments/observations noted in previous publications questioning the Bush administration’s claims to go to war with Iraq, exceptional.

Previously, I liked the fact the congresswoman questioned the Bush administration’s actions to attacked and destroy another nation because of the claim the Bush administration put forth regarding Saddam Hussein’s government had in its possession, weapons of mass destruction and he (Saddam) posed a grave danger to the national community. The congresswoman rightly stood up and called out the fake claim and backed it up within her authority as a member of congress and I really appreciated and respected what she was communicating as her comments potentially helped created the pathway for more American citizens to understand what are state crimes and how these crimes attack and undermine our constitutional republic.

With that previous observation, I was shocked all while fascinated when I came across this publication several months ago because one of the Bush administration officials pushing the theory Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was none other than Robert Mueller. As a reminder, Mr. Mueller was in charge of the FBI on 9/11 and he reported to the nation the FBI had NO FOREWARNING about what would eventually happen that tragic day. However, there’s a documented record of a congressional investigation (not to be confused with the 9/11 commission report) published in 2003 the Congresswoman would be aware of because that congressional investigation presented evidence the FBI or elements of the leadership of the FBI including elements the CIA knew something was up before the attack on our nation that day.

In my view, the congresswoman’s support for Robert Mueller’s investigation resulting from Trump’s legal authority in firing Comey was disturbing and confusing in that it countered her previous views so I read the whole book trying to understand as the Congresswoman very clearly said on MSNBC that “Trump firing the FBI director was a valid justification for impeachment as referenced by the fact she was a member of Congress who attempted to impeached Richard Nixon for firing the special counsel investigating the illegal conduct by Nixon and his administration.

The problem is that Trump did not fire the special counsel, as in the case for Nixon. Donald Trump fired Comey who was the head of the FBI. I admit, this deflection of the facts influenced a disappointing read of this publication because the author again validated she said this when she wrote that the “Comey firing uncannily echoes Nixon’s firing of the special Watergate prosecutor..." within the publication.

But, as noted previously, Trump did not fire Robert Mueller…he fired Comey and he did indeed tell Lester Holt he fired Comey because of this Russian thing. There’s been a lot of commentary referencing Trump firing the head of the FBI however; there’s been a very serious failure from the main stream media platforms to report all of the facts regarding the coup attempt in this nation trying to take out the change agent, the president of the United States, Donald Trump and regretfully, the congresswoman is avoiding this fact as she’s a smart person so I admit I now question her integrity after reading this book.

I can not recommend this publication as it's distorted and is presenting disingenuous claims as details about the coup attempt in this nation to illegally take out the Trump administration can be found below including historical references created by congress revealing a disturbing pattern the mainstream media platforms have failed to tell you about regarding the FBI and the CIA’s historical footprint:

1) Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001
2) 1963 JFK Assassination: Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board - President John F. Kennedy, The JFK Act, Investigations, FBI and CIA, Zapruder Film, Medical and Ballistics, Critics
3) The Nelson Rockefeller Report to the President, June 1975
4) The FBI, COINTELPRO, And Martin Luther King, Jr.: Final Report Of The Select Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence Activities
5) Project MKULTRA, the CIA's program of research in behavioral modification
6) The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program
7) FBI IG Report: A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
8) House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Interview of Glenn Simpson
9) House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Meeting Transcript (January 29, 2018): Includes BOTH The Nunes and Schiff Memos
10) A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe: February 2018

Additional publications most strongly recommend to understand what is really going on in this nation:
1) The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump
2) Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy
3) Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump
4) Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump
5) Into The Buzzsaw: LEADING JOURNALISTS EXPOSE THE MYTH OF A FREE PRESS

There are posted reviews of all of the publications noted above as I have read them all including several other publications attempting to support the coup attempt in this nation.

[Donna Wolff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and very informative case made for the impeachment of Donald Trump by a woman who would know. Holtzman was a young House member in 1974 who sat on the judiciary committee that ultimately decided Nixon's fate.

[Patrick DiJusto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donald Trump has been described as a Black Hole of Need, absorbing and destroying everything that comes into his orbit. And a peculiarity of black holes is that, to an outside observer, time speeds up near them -- the past two years of the Trump administration have aged most of us a decade or more!

That is this book's only flaw. Time passes so rapidly around Donald Trump that even with an expedited publishing schedule, any book written about his future is obsolete when the author submits the manuscript.

In 1974, Holtzman was the then-youngest female member of Congress, part of the House Judiciary Committee, and she worked on the bipartisan bills of impeachment for Richard Nixon. She _knows_ how to impeach a president: she's done it before.

Using the Nixon files as a template, Holtzman carefully examines the definitions of impeachment, high crimes, emoluments, and other terms as they apply to the Trump administration. She carefully lays out how the President's actions across multiple fronts constitute impeachable acts, using criteria established 35 years ago. I had come into the book already believing that Trump has committed impeachable acts, so it didn't take much to convince me.

Probably the most eye-opening concept in the book is that a president's impeachable crimes do not have to be criminal acts under any criminal code. A president does not have to commit burglary or bribery or murder to be impeached. A president can be impeached for actions which, in the eyes of the Congress, go against the spirit of the Constitution, and weaken the Office of the President, and weaken the United States.

So, why all the talk about black holes and time acceleration? Because at the end of the book, Holtzman says that we only have enough evidence at the time of her writing, to impeach the president on his own domestic actions. We do not have enough information on his interactions with, and help from, the Russians in the 2016 election. We also don't have enough information Concerning hush money he may or may not have paid to women he had affairs with.

Of course, as things stand now, January 7th, 2019, it looks much more likely that if Trump is impeached, it will be precisely for his payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels. C'est la vie.

[Ronald Koltnow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holtzman's experiences during the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon inform this study of what the framers meant when they added the impeachment provision to our Constitution. To the Founding Fathers, the threat of a venal chief executive, one who would use his office for personal gain, one who would ignore the balance of powers so clearly articulated in our primary document, meant that the House of Representatives had the responsibility, the duty, to redress the situation. They mentioned "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," that is to say, crimes committed from on high. In the case of Nixon, his lying to and stonewalling the investigation into the Watergate break-in was cause for impeachment. The people and their elected representatives saw the facts and decided that presidential power had been abused. The fallacy in Holtzman's essay here is that people no longer believe in objective truth; the people select only those facts that fit their party affiliation. This spells death for our democratic republic. Holtzman shows the abuses of Trump and analyzes, clearly and objectively, whether they rise to the level of impeachable offenses. More often than not, they not only seem impeachable but seem to mirror Nixon in ways that should be obvious. Since the book's publication, Mueller has filed his report (and no direct action was taken) and the House filed Articles of Impeachment. We shall see ....

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holtzman was the AOC of the 70s and served in Congress on the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s Watergate fiasco. This is the best book about impeachment or impeaching Trump that came out before he was actually impeached the first time. It’s a terrific, fast and easy read. Her points were clear and easy to understand. She used legal and historical examples but didn’t get bogged down in the language. She definitely knew her audience. The body is only 128 pages, then 3 appendixes, including the articles of impeachment against Nixon and articles 1-3 of the Constitution.

She told me several things about Nixon or Watergate that I never saw elsewhere or that her perspective and emphasis put in a different light. I still find it interesting to examine those wild years from different participants’ perspectives, trying to circle in on the truth.

Appendix I is super interesting, the summary of the House Judiciary Committee report in the history and law about impeachment’s, including a debate about the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors. After vigorous debate about this, most committee members including Republicans agreed that a criminal infraction wasn’t necessary. Seriously bleeping interesting and good for short attention span people like me who would have a hard time plowing through the whole report.

[Rob Melich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another day in the altered political reality of American politics 2020. Finished reading this book as the Senate debates presidential removal and whether having witnesses testified is in the best interest of the country (baffled that it needs discussion).
Pairing this book with Elizabeth Drew's made it easier to understand the premise that elected officials, especially the president, are required per the Oath of Office to protect the Constitution (not their own power and bank accounts) and to serve those who elected them and those who did not (still US citizens), and in turn, not serve on behalf of their own interests or those of their families and friends.
I'm not smart or knowledgeable enough to determine whether all of the examples Ms. Holtzman shares are impeachable, but just by his own words quoted in this book, DT should not be president.
And it is frustrating and appalling that often the argument for the acceptance of DT's current behavior is measured against the past not the law; HRC did not get elected so DT's actions must stand or fall on their own.

[Nick Winlund · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book written in 2018 before the Mueller Report was delivered. Author Elizabeth Holtzman has experience in the area of impeachment, having helped served up impeachment articles for Richard Nixon.

The book covers everything Trumpian from January 2017-mid 2018 and also before (the election in 2016 and everything that went wrong during it).

This is a handy book to own, given that the current President is going through impeachment by the House right now. History is repeating itself.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars, but only because events have overtaken it.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is essentially a long law review article. I could have done without the last chapter. I did like the overall focus of comparing Trump’s actions with those of Nixon.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books I have read on President Trump. Holtzman was a part of the House Judiciary Committee during the Impeachment hearings of Nixon. She explains what impeachment means and how it has been used in the past. The author gives a comparative analysis of the impeachment articles of President Richard Nixon, sites specific descriptions of the possible articles of impeachment that could be used on Trump, and explains how these constitutional principles have been broken (sometimes repeatedly). These articles include Bribery, Treason, Rejection of Due Process, Emoluments, Deceiving and giving False information to the public, etc. In other words, anything Nixon did, Trump did it in a much more obvious and immoral fashion. We could also convict him for the Capitol insurrection, Ukraine quid pro quo, and many other things.

[Katie]

I dont have a rating for this. I need to read the other side of the story.