Question for DU Legal Minds: What law did Trump break?

[Tanuki]

30. This article has some good information

It's written by Corey Brettschneider, the author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/26/does-trump-need-to-break-the-law-to-be-impeached-the-answer-is-no

"In the coming days, opinions sections and cable news shows will be inundated with discussion about whether President Trump’s attempt to pressure the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into investigating Joe Biden’s role in a supposed conspiracy was a criminal act. However, the answer to this question alone does not tell us whether Trump should be impeached. The constitutional standard of impeachment – “high crimes and misdemeanors” – is not a legal one. Rather, an impeachable offense occurs when a president violates the oath to abide by the constitution’s limits and respect its values. Trump’s use of political pressure on a foreign power to further his own re-election chances clearly fits.
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Nixon’s case is instructive in this era of Trump. Part of the case against Nixon was about his role in the unlawful break-in and cover-up at the Watergate hotel. But Congress also drew up articles of impeachment that criticized his obstruction of justice, abuse of power, failure to execute the law impartially, and defiance of subpoenas – all actions that undermined the office’s ideals of constitutional democracy, even if they were not criminal violations. There, instruction about the constitutional responsibilities of the president helped to turn public opinion.

We should take the same path in Trump’s case. Public opinion is not fixed and can be moved with the right approach, as it was during Nixon’s impeachment hearings, moving from 19% approval of impeachment to 50% from early 1973 to summer 1974. An inquiry can be useful in determining whether Trump committed crimes in seeking an investigation of Biden and his son, and a positive finding on that question obviously adds to the gravity of his wrongdoing. But Congress should also draw the public’s attention to Trump’s fundamental failures to uphold his constitutional responsibilities as president. The inquiry cannot just be limited to criminal harms."...(more)