At a press conference held on Wednesday, March 6, Representative Rashida Tlaib announced that she plans to file a resolution this month to start an impeachment investigation of President Trump.

Representative Tlaib emphasized the urgency of impeachment and addressed concerns:

“I think every single colleague of mine agrees there’s impeachable offenses. That’s one thing that we all agree on. We may disagree on the pace. We may disagree that we have to wait for certain hearings, but at the same time, I think they all know the dangers of allowing President Trump to continue to violate our United States Constitution.”

John Bonifaz, Free Speech For People’s Co-Founder and President, joined the new By the People campaign for this historic announcement in Congresswoman Tlaib’s office, and he also spoke at the press conference, highlighting the overwhelming evidence that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Bonifaz expressed Free Speech For People’s support of Representative Tlaib, stating:

“We applaud Congresswoman Tlaib for her courageous and bold leadership, and we urge all Members of Congress to join her.”

He went on to urge Congress to act now to address this constitutional crisis:

“Now is not the time for traditional congressional oversight. Now is the time for Members of Congress to face this extraordinary moment in history, to confront this constitutional crisis threatening our nation, and to start an impeachment investigation of this president.”

Read more about Representative Tlaib’s press conference and her plans to file the resolution in the Detroit News and in Newsweek.

You can also read Representative Rashida Tlaib’s op-ed, co-authored with John Bonifaz, in the Detroit Free Press here.

Earlier this week, Free Speech For People joined Need to Impeach for a critical two-day Impeachment Summit. The Summit featured a panel by Free Speech for People legal experts, a press conference, activist trainings, and an advocacy day.

On Monday, our legal experts addressed over 250 activists from around the country on the 10 legal grounds for impeachment proceedings against the president. Watch the full panel below!

On the panel (seated left to right): Legal Director Ron Fein; Board Member and Vermont Law Professor Jennifer Taub; President and Co-Founder John Bonifaz; and Board Chair Ben Clements.

Activists from across the country listened to the legal case for impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump.

We also helped to prepare them to deliver our book, The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump, and drafted Articles of Impeachment to give to every Member of Congress on Tuesday.

Free Speech For People President, John Bonifaz, delivers The Constitution Demands It and associated materials to Speaker Pelosi’s office.

Board Chair Ben Clements spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, outlining the legal and Constitutional case to begin impeachment hearings and why we cannot wait for the Mueller investigation. Congressman Al Green was also among the featured speakers at the press conference, speaking about why Congress must start impeachment proceedings now.

FSFP Board Members Stephanie Sanchez, John Bonifaz, Jennifer Taub, and Ben Binswanger with Congressman Al Green in his office on Capitol Hill.

The Impeachment Summit proved that We the People can and will stand up for our democracy and hold Donald Trump accountable for his repeated abuses of power. Thank you to all the activists, volunteers, and organizers for their efforts and commitment to our democracy. To take action, click here! Together we can fight corruption and begin impeachment proceedings against this president.

On January 29, 2019, Free Speech For People joined Need to Impeach and activists from across the country to deliver new resources to members of Congress to immediately begin impeachment proceedings against the President for his continued lawlessness and ever-increasing egregious abuses of power. The day of action concluded a three-day Impeachment Summit gathering organizers and activists, legal experts, and more, in Washington, DC, to build and grow the nationwide movement to hold the President accountable to the law.

Free Speech For People developed the new resources distributed to Members of Congress including the ten legal grounds for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of the President; a resolution for Congress to authorize impeachment hearings; and model articles of impeachment.

We also delivered a copy of our book, The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump, to every Member of the House of Representatives.

To download our new resource packet for legislators, click here.

Watch out panel on the legal grounds for impeachment proceedings against the President below!

Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to pass a resolution calling on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against the President. On January 24, 2019, Massachusetts State Senator Jo Comerford introduced Resolution SD. 1565, drafted from our model resolution and citing our ten legal grounds for impeachment, urging Congress to conduct an impeachment investigation of the President. To date, seventeen cities and towns have passed resolutions calling on Congress to act on impeachment.

Reporting in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on the resolution, notes:

Comerford said in a statement that it is a critical time to defend the U.S. Constitution and democracy, and emphasize that no one is above the law.

“People from all over the commonwealth have stood up to demand Congress do their duty and hold President Trump accountable for his abuse of power and abuse of the public trust,” Comerford said.

The resolution would follow local resolutions calling for impeachment proceedings to begin against Trump, including ones adopted in Amherst and Pelham, and is similar to a bill introduced in the California legislature.

…

John Bonifaz … Free Speech For People cofounder and president, said he appreciates Comerford’s action because of the threat Trump poses.

“On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, and the rule of law,” Bonifaz said. “His conduct has created a constitutional crisis which we must confront now.”

We applaud Senator Comerford’s leadership and action in holding the President accountable to the law!

To read the full article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, click here.

In an article for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch calls for Congress to launch an impeachment inquiry into the President, in parallel with the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Bunch notes Congress has delegated its responsibility to hold the President accountable for his impeachable offenses to Mueller, stating, “Congress and other key players have used the Mueller probe as an excuse for inaction on the dangers posed by Trump.” Bunch further states that reticence from Congress to begin an impeachment inquiry, only furthers the lawlessness of the President, and removes a critical check on the balance of power in our government.

Continue reading…

The March 2019 issue of The Atlantic features an important piece by historian Yoni Applebaum, in which he lays out the case for why we must begin the impeachment process against President Trump.

Applebaum details Trump’s many constitutional violations in his article:

…[Trump] has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

Appelbaum rebuts many common objections to impeachment in his piece. He argues that impeachment is not an partisan issue, but rather individuals from both sides of the aisle have spoken out against Trump’s unconstitutional actions, and those who have worked closely with the president express the most alarm. Applebaum also addresses the trepidation Congress has expressed in beginning the impeachment process, choosing to “outsource its responsibilities to federal prosecutors.” But we cannot wait for judges or the Mueller Investigation:

Only by authorizing a dedicated impeachment inquiry can the House begin to assemble disparate allegations into a coherent picture, forcing lawmakers to consider both whether specific charges are true and whether the president’s abuses of his power justify his removal.

Trump has violated the Constitution repeatedly and profoundly. Regardless of politics, impeachment is a constitutional process designed by our nation’s founders for precisely this purpose:

[The founders] created a mechanism for considering whether a president is subverting the rule of law or pursuing his own self-interest at the expense of the general welfare—in short, whether his continued tenure in office poses a threat to the republic. This mechanism is impeachment….

Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial.

Applebaum concludes his powerful piece with a call to action for Congress:

Today, the United States once more confronts a president who seems to care for only some of the people he represents, who promises his supporters that he can roll back the tide of diversity, who challenges the rule of law, and who regards constitutional rights and liberties as disposable. Congress must again decide whether the greater risk lies in executing the Constitution as it was written, or in deferring to voters to do what it cannot muster the courage to do itself. The gravest danger facing the country is not a Congress that seeks to measure the president against his oath—it is a president who fails to measure up to that solemn promise.

Read the article in Atlantic Magazine here.

Want to get involved in the movement to hold President Trump accountable to the law? Click here to take action!

The Office of Inspector General of the General Services Administration issued a scathing report on “Evaluation of GSA’s Management and Administration of the Old Post Office Building Lease.” As the Inspector General concludes, GSA lawyers essentially ignored a glaring constitutional problem with leasing this federally-owned building to the Trump Organization.

As background, the GSA administers the lease of the federally-owned Old Post Office Building to the Trump International Hotel. The Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution provides: “The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” (This is a separate provision from the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which applies to presents and emoluments from foreign governments and their instrumentalities.)

The problem is that the GSA leases the building to the Trump Organization, which is owned by the president. To make matters worse, the GSA’s lease contract includes standard language providing: “No . . . elected official of the Government of the United States . . . shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom . . . .” After Trump entered office, the GSA announced that it had concluded that this clause somehow did not apply, on the bizarre theory that since the Trump Organization nominally transferred management of the LLCs and corporations that operate the hotel to Trump’s sons, Trump will not “benefit” from the lease during his term in office. The GSA’s decision not to enforce the unambiguous term in the lease contract is a government benefit and domestic emolument.

The Inspector General’s report notes that the lease “raised issues under the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses that might cause a breach of the lease; however, GSA decided not to address those issues.” GSA’s own lawyers recognized the constitutional problem early on, but “the attorneys decided to ignore the emoluments issue … without conducting any research of the two Emoluments Clauses or checking for any OLC opinions.”

President Trump has been enriching himself from public resources since the moment he took office, and unfortunately in this case, federal government lawyers sworn to uphold the Constitution enabled his profiteering. Congress must begin an immediate impeachment inquiry.