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December
19, 2007
The
Hon. Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
US House of Representatives
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Re:
Impeachment Proceedings Against President Bush &
Vice President Cheney
Dear
Speaker Pelosi:
Merry
Christmas. I have not seen you since the MoAD Gala in
March. I hope you are doing well and that you get to
enjoy your newest grandchild.
The
Equal Justice Society has been wrestling with the issue
of impeachment for over a year. After we saw the bravery
of the attorneys and judges in Pakistan who spoke out
against an over-reaching executive, we concluded that
we must speak. We do not take this action lightly. Our
funding might be put in jeopardy by what we are urging
you to do but we feel conscience requires us to act.
As
members of the legal community committed to defending
the Constitution and the basic principles of the rule
of law, we believe that duty requires the Members of
the United States House of Representatives to initiate
formal impeachment proceedings against President Bush
and Vice President Cheney. We urge you, in your capacity
as Speaker, to lead the House in carrying out this constitutional
duty.
Article
II, Section 4 of the Constitution states: "The
President, Vice President…shall be removed from
Office on Impeachment for…high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
The Framers drafted Article II, Section 4 to ensure
that the people of the United States, through their
representatives in the United States Congress, could
hold a President and Vice President accountable for
an abuse of power and an abuse of the public trust.
James Madison, speaking at Virginia's ratification convention,
stated: "A President is impeachable if he attempts
to subvert the Constitution." [1]
Alexander
Hamilton, writing in The Federalist, stated that impeachment
is for "the misconduct of public men…from
the abuse or violation of some public trust." [2]
James Iredell, who would later become a Justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, stated at North Carolina's ratification
convention that a President commits an impeachable offense
"for giving false information to the Senate"
and "by that means induc[ing] them to enter into
measures injurious to their country." [3]
We
believe there is substantial evidence to support the
initiation of impeachment proceedings. To preserve and
protect the Constitution and our careful system of checks
and balances for today and for future administrations,
we urge the House of Representatives to undertake such
proceedings on the following grounds:
- Whether
the President and Vice President have deceived and
misled the Congress and the American people about
the basis for going to war against Iraq, including
whether they have violated the False Statements Accountability
Act of 1996, 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it
a felony to issue knowingly and willfully false statements
to the Congress, and the federal anti-conspiracy statute,
18 U.S.C. § 371, which makes it a felony "to
commit any offense against the United States, or to
defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in
any manner or for any purpose…"
-
Whether the President and Vice President have authorized
the use of torture by members of the U.S. military
and have authorized the extradition of prisoners to
countries which are known to use torture, including
whether they have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996,
the Federal Anti-Torture Statute of 1994, the UN Convention
Against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions.
-
Whether the President and Vice President have authorized
warrantless domestic spying of American citizens,
including whether they have violated the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
On
July 25, 1974, during the Watergate proceedings, then-Representative
Barbara Jordan spoke to her colleagues on the House
Judiciary Committee of the constitutional basis for
impeachment. "The powers relating to impeachment,"
Jordan said, "are an essential check in the hands
of this body, the legislature, against and upon the
encroachment of the Executive." Impeachment, she
added,
is
chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers
to somehow be called into account. It is designed
to 'bridle' the Executive if he engages in excesses.
It is designed as a method of national inquest into
the conduct of public men. The framers confined in
the Congress the power, if need be, to remove the
President in order to strike a delicate balance between
a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical
and preservation of the independence of the Executive.
[4]
Thirty-three
years later, serious questions now exist whether we
face anew a President and Vice President who have become
"swollen with power and grown tyrannical."
In the name of our Constitution and our democracy, we
urge the House of Representatives to act today and to
initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush
and Vice President Cheney.
We
feel that impeachment should be put back on the table.
We know that this administration has but one more year
to govern but we know that it is critical that lawyers
stand up and speak the truth. Dangerous precedents are
being set. Future presidents and vice presidents will
take from our silence our acquiescence to lawless acts.
This compels us to act.
Sincerely,
/s/
Eva Paterson
——
[1]
J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions
on Adoption of the Constitution, As Recommended by the
General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787 (Washington:
1836), vol. 3 at 500.
[2] Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay,
The Federalist, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Cleveland:
Meridian Books, World Publishing Company, 1961), No.
65, p. 439.
[3] Id., vol. 4 at 127.
[4] The full text of Representative Jordan's opening
statement to the House Judiciary Committee on July 25,
1974, can be found
here.
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