Bribery
The impeachable offense Trump may have committed — but Democrats aren’t really talking about
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/02/impeachable-offense-trump-may-have-committed-democrats-arent-really-talking-about/#comments-wrapper
Donald Trump is likely to become the third president in United States history to be impeached. What exactly will be in the articles of impeachment, we don’t know; all we do know is that they’re likely to focus on the Ukraine scandal. But there is one word curiously missing from the case against him thus far.
Bribery.
Much of the coverage of and commentary on impeachment has thus far focused on “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But there are two specific impeachable offenses listed in the Constitution before that: “Treason” and “Bribery.” And there’s a credible case to be made that attaching the impeachment effort to the specific and broadly understood offense of bribery would be an easier political sell than “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
A handful of scholars and legal experts have argued that what Trump did constitutes bribery -- or at least, bribery as the Founding Fathers understood it.
The federal bribery statute says someone has committed bribery if he or she is a “public official” who “directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally ... in return for .... being influenced in the performance of any official act.” The argument here would be that Trump sought politically helpful investigations from Ukraine in exchange for releasing military aid and/or granting a much-sought Oval Office meeting for its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. To date, six officials have said there was some kind of quid pro quo there.
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