President Trump’s legal team has argued that abuse of power is not by itself an impeachable offense, but the president said it could be in some cases for his successors.
“For future presidents, is abuse of power an impeachable offense?” a reporter asked Trump at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
“It depends,” Trump replied. “All I do is, I’m honest. I make great deals. I’ve made great deals for our country.”
On Monday, Trump’s impeachment team argued in a 110-page brief that the article of impeachment claiming that he abused his power in the Ukraine scandal was unconstitutional because he was not accused of an ordinary crime.
“House Democrats’ novel conception of ‘abuse of power’ as a supposedly impeachable offense is constitutionally defective,” they wrote. “It supplants the framers’ standard of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ with a made-up theory that the president can be impeached and removed from office under an amorphous and undefined standard of ‘abuse of power.’”
In addition to abuse of power, the president also faces an article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress.
