To the Constitution’s authors, therefore, a “high crime and misdemeanor,” need not violate an extant law or statute, and neither would a president who commits a common violation be guilty of a “high” offense. An impeachable offense need not be illegal at all. “Lying to the American people might be impeachable,” Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar has recently noted, “but it might not be a crime on the statute books.”
