OSU professor: Impeachment inquiry in line with intent of nation's founders
CORVALLIS, Ore. – An Oregon State professor said the move by the House of Representatives to open an impeachment inquiry into President Trump "are in keeping with a set of foundational concepts: an absolute injunction against foreign influence and meddling.”
Christopher Nichols, an associate professor of history and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State University, offered thoughts Tuesday on the news that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had authorized an impeachment inquiry to begin.
“President Trump’s efforts with -- and ties to -- foreign governments, particularly Russia and these latest developments regarding Ukraine, have made an impeachment investigation followed by a vote in the House and the Senate very likely," Nichols said.
Foreign intervention in American politics and the leveraging of U.S. power to manipulate other nations toward domestic political and partisan interests has always been perhaps the most fundamental worry about the American democracy. For the nation’s founders the possibility of foreign influence in any of many potentially insidious forms was an essential reason to bestow the impeachment power on the U.S. Congress, to check the power of a president beholden to or actively working with foreign nations. As I have argued elsewhere, “the founders would be aghast” about President Trump’s penchant for accepting and especially pursuing foreign influence and information in American politics.
“The latest developments announcing an impeachment investigation in the House of Representatives," Nichols added, "are in keeping with a set of foundational concepts: an absolute injunction against foreign influence and meddling.”
