That summary judgment shouldn’t cause one to assume that Lucas’s Abuse of Power. Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump is a one-sided blast against Democrats.  Indeed, for Trump supporters, the author’s focus on historical, legal, and testimonial details may seem frustratingly nonpartisan.  Nevertheless, it is instructive to know the legal and procedural differences that distinguish Trump’s impeachment from the proceedings brought against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  President Nixon, of course, wasn’t formally impeached, but the congressional proceedings that would have led to his impeachment and removal from office did set a standard that was largely followed during Clinton’s impeachment but abandoned by Speaker Pelosi’s party.

Lucas’s analysis doesn’t begin with the “impeachment investigations” headlined incongruously by Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  Instead, it starts (after an historical preface) with dreams of impeachment conceived even before Trump’s inauguration and first presented as a resolution to the House of Representatives  in 2017 by the bomb-throwing Texas Democrat, Al Green.  Several chapters are then devoted to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to stave off what she feared would be a politically damaging focus on impeachment prior to the 2018 elections.  

After those elections, the radical shift of her party’s base, exemplified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s crushing primary victory over an established New York congressman, meant that now Speaker Pelosi, as well as many establishment Democrats, might be forced to walk the impeachment plank or risk losing their positions of power to challengers of the Ocasio-Cortez stripe.  The pressure on Pelosi to impeach President Trump from this Squad-inspired base only increased after Mueller’s Russia collusion investigation came up empty but set a novel legal standard by declaring the President had “not been exonerated” of an obstruction of justice charge.