Third, the ex-post-facto approach is inconsistent with the standards that actually prevailed during the founding era: Trials for impeachment (whatever Justice Story said 40 years later) were not politics-as-usual, but scrupulously legal procedures, and had been so at least since the trial of the Earl of Strafford in 1641. People knew what the rules were: An officer was impeachable for the commission of (1) “high Crimes” (felonies) or for (2) what 18th-century lawyers called “breach of trust” and what 21st-century lawyers call “breach of fiduciary duty.”President Trump has been assiduously fulfilling his campaign promises. The “faction” (as the founders would have put it) known as "the Democrats” have been determined that he should not do that. They want the trust of the people to be breached.“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander Hamilton
Thanks for the ping/post. POSTS BUMP!