 |
| Andrew Johnson's Senate trial, 13 March 1868, Library of Congress/Getty Images, via Vox. |
Next time somebody tells you that the Articles of Impeachment fail to accuse our president of any crimes, refer them to the newly issued Report of the House Committee on the Judiciary (there's a notice in Politico), which argues on Article I that he's guilty of Criminal Bribery, 18 U.S.C. § 201 and Honest Services Fraud, 18 U.S.C § 1346.
The first count is laid out in terms of the federal anti-bribery statute, according to which
criminal bribery occurs when a public official (1) “demands [or] seeks” (2) “anything of value personally,” (3) “in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act.”684 Additionally, the public official must carry out these actions (4) “corruptly.”685 We address the four statutory elements in turn.First, the solicitation, which may be indirect,
for example, where a public official with authority to award construction contracts requested that a contractor “take a look at the roof” of the official’s home.was directly made in Trump's 25 July call to President Zelenskyy, when he asked for the "favor" of a couple of investigations, one of the theory that Ukrainians were somehow involved in the theft and publication of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, one of the theory that Vice President Biden saved his son Hunter from Ukrainian criminal prosecution for some unnamed offense by forcing the firing of the prosecutor, both pretty clearly untrue and indeed nonsensical; and also made on several occasions by Trump's "irregulars", Volker and Sondland, under the guidance of Giuliani.
The "thing of value" was the desired announcement of investigations, which was clearly valuable at least in Trump's mind:
