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August 1, 2023

Under our Constitution, impeachment and removal from office is not a criminal proceeding. It is a fiduciary accounting for abuse of office. In Joe Biden’s case it would be for abuse of the office of President. His fault would be having been unfaithful to his trust as President.

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To assume his office, Biden promised the American people that he would “faithfully execute the office of President.”

This rule of faithful best efforts on the part of every President was applied in the article of impeachment of Richard Nixon as follows:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

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Wherefore Richard M. Nixon, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.

(This language was adopted by Special Counsel John Doar in part to follow my research into the history of impeachments when a student at Harvard Law School in 1974, research which was later published in the Georgetown Law Journal: “Public Office as a Public Trust: a suggestion that a fiduciary standard is implied in Impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Georgetown Law Journal, 1975)

Our constitutional standard for what is right and what is wrong when holding an office of public trust was set in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 34:

Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them… Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.

Fiduciary law holds that when a President is accused of self-dealing to serve himself and not the American people, such a President must attempt to prove himself innocent by making full disclosure of all the relevant facts to the Congress.

In an impeachment inquiry, there is no presumption of innocence to protect the defendant. Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. A president under impeachment has no due process privileges such as the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.