Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (1/2)
Impeachment Hearings: House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1974 (1/2)
[00.20.28] The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Missouri has expired. I recognize the gentleman from Michigan. Mr. HUTCHINSON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. The proposed article Of impeachment now being debated charges that the President has violated his oath of office and his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. It charges that he, has done. so by repeatedly engaging in unconstitutional and illegal conduct. The wording of the proposed article II raises a number of serious questions which I hope will be addressed by its proponents during the course of this debate. While I strenuously dispute as a matter of fact that the evidence establishes that the President has repeatedly engaged in unconstitutional and unlawful conduct, I am curious as to what the drafters of this article perceive to be the legal significance of the allegation that such acts have been done repeatedly. What is The gravamen of the offense charged in this article; the supposed repetition of misconduct or the specific instances of it which are alleged? Would any of these individual allegations standing alone support an article of impeachment? Or do they only amount to impeachable conduct when considered in the aggregate? If some would stand alone and others could not, tell us which is which. How many of these allegations must we believe to be supported by the evidence before we would be Justified in voting for the entire article ? Even if each and every allegation were Proved true, is it, fair or is it grossly misleading to say that, the President has violated his oath repeatedly? Repeatedly means again and again. Surely this does not mean isolated or even sporadic failures of duty. It can only connote a regular persistent course of conduct, warranting a belief that the alleged instances of lawlessness are characteristic and not exceptional. Is it really fair? Does it depict the Whole truth to examine the entire record of this administration during the past 5 1/2 years, to examine the totality of countless tells of thousands of official actions taken by the President personally by members of his White House staff and by other subordinate officials of the executive branch of Government and to cull from that huge mass of official action this relative, handful of specific allegations and to derive from them the proposition that the President's conduct, has been repeatedly unlawful? Consider, for example, the question of -wiretaps. I do not acknowledge that these wiretaps were unjustified or under all the circumstances illegal as the law exist at the time they took place. But even if some were, which I do not concede, in all fairness can it be said that if those, few -wiretaps, most of which were instituted in two groups spread over a 1-year period and the last of which terminated in February 1971 furnish evidence of repeated violation of the Constitution? As in the case, of the evidence relating to the Plumbers' operation they, show a, specific Presidential response to a specific and serious problem: namely, the public disclosure by leaks of highly sensitive information bearing upon the, conduct of American foreign policy during that very turbulent period both domestically and internationally. What effect--what effort has our staff made to bring before this committee a coherent comprehensive reconstruction of the claimant and the circumstances of the 1969 through 1971 period in which The wiretaps occurred? We have heard no eloquence to stir our memories as to the violence and as to the disorder and the war which nearly had this Nation on its knees at the time that Richard Nixon look office. The President's prosecutors would have us view the actions of which they, complained in the abstract, ripped from the very context of the event which precipitated them, giving not even lip service to the Serious governmental problems which they were designed, even if designed clumsily to Cope with. Mr. Chairman, I will vote against this ill-conceived article of impeachment. [00.25.23]