As revelations surrounding Hillary Clinton's private email use continue to emerge, Americans are growing increasingly frustrated by the FBI's decision not to indict the former Secretary of State after concluding a criminal investigation of the matter in July.
It is clear Clinton lied to Congress, lied to the FBI and lied to the American people about her email habits all while putting the national security of the United States at severe risk. Not to mention a number quid pro quo agreements made on behalf of the Clinton Foundation during her tenure.
While there never seems to be any accountability for the corruption of the Clintons, there is one option left: impeachment of the Democrat presidential nominee.
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy explains the constitutional grounds for doing so over at National Review:
Indeed, the Constitution expressly provides for criminal prosecution in addition to impeachment. Nevertheless, for the Framers — and, if we had common sense, for us — the imperative was to deprive a corrupt person of any further opportunity to abuse government power. Whether the official should also be convicted and sent to prison was not unimportant but, in the greater scheme of things, decidedly secondary.
The Constitution does not limit impeachment to incumbent officials. Article I endows the House of Representatives with the “sole Power of Impeachment” — i.e., the power to file articles of impeachment. It further empowers the Senate with “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Significantly, in prescribing the standard for conviction in the Senate, Article I, Section 3 states that “no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present.”
Note carefully: The Constitution does not say the impeached person must be a current officeholder. As we shall see, that makes perfect sense: The point of impeachment is to deny power to any person — not necessarily an incumbent official — whose high crimes and misdemeanors have demonstrated unfitness for a high public trust.
Politically, a move like this is beneficial to Republicans. After all, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the FBI's decision not to indict Clinton and believe she should face consequences for mishandling classified information on number of private servers.
In the meantime the House Oversight Committee is asking federal prosecutors to look into why Clinton's attorneys, who went through Clinton's emails, were handling classified information without having the proper security clearance to do so. The Committee has also asked prosecutors to look into whether Clinton staff deleted emails after being issued subpoenas or requests from Congress to preserve them.
