[rad-green] Flashback: What Nadler said about impeaching a president in 1998

*https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/flashback-what-nadler-said-about-impeaching-president-1998-n1095141
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/flashback-what-nadler-said-about-impeaching-president-1998-n1095141>NBC
News          Dec. 4, 2019*



*Flashback: What Nadler said about impeaching a president in 1998Then, he
was a rank-and-file member of the powerful House Judiciary Committee he now
chairs.*

[image: image.png]


*Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., makes his opening statement during a House
Judiciary Committee hearing regarding articles of impeachment against
President Bill Clinton in December 1998.Douglas Graham / CQ-Roll Call, Inc
via Getty Images fileBy Dan Gallo*

In a packed hearing room on Wednesday, Rep. Jerry Nadler
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/it-s-nadler-s-turn-take-trump-again-n1091991?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma>
will
lead the House Judiciary Committee in the next phase of the impeachment
process against President Donald Trump.

But Nadler, D-N.Y., has been through the process once before, in a very
different capacity. On Dec. 10, 1998, he was a rank-and-file member of the
powerful committee he now chairs. As part of the minority — Republicans
controlled both chambers of Congress at the time — he opposed the articles
of impeachment that had been drafted against President Bill Clinton
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/impeach121098.htm>
.

During a 10-minute opening statement, Nadler, who has a law degree from
Fordham, laid out a case for what he believed constituted an impeachable
offense, framing the issue in a way that now seems prescient.

Impeachment, he said, was reserved for "a president who would abuse the
powers of the presidency to arrogate power to himself or to subvert the
system of government."

"It is in fact a peaceful procedure for protecting the nation from despots,
by providing a constitutional means for removing a president who misuses
presidential power to make himself a tyrant or otherwise to undermine our
constitutional form of government," Nadler said. “To impeach a president,
it must be that serious.”

That legal opinion seems consistent with his views today. But his views on
the political nature of impeachment were very different from his current
position, leading a committee that seems irrevocably divided along partisan
lines.

Both parties must support impeachment, he said in 1998, or else it would
divide the country too much.

"There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment
substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely
opposed by the other,” he said then.

“Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and
bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question
the very legitimacy of our political institutions," he added.

Nadler's office did not respond to a request for comment.

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