“Trump’s racism is an impeachable offense. The precedent of Andrew Johnson proves it.”

“Presidents are free to oppose and criticize laws passed by Congress but not to block their execution for reasons of racial animus.”

“[President Andrew] Johnson’s deep-rooted racism, along with his verbal excoriation of his congressional foes as “treasonous” — something our current president has also done — led to his impeachment in 1868. Article 10 of his impeachment indictment provides a legal basis and historical precedent for making a president’s racist speech an impeachable offense, by itself, as evidence of unfitness to hold the highest and most powerful office in the land.

“Sound like someone we all know? These charges certainly describe “President Donald Trump’s deplorable behavior and its effects on Congress, the presidency, and — most importantly — the divisions he has exploited and widened among the American people, as well as the damage he has caused to America’s standing and role in the world community.

“But they aren’t an imaginary list of offenses compiled by Congress to hold Trump accountable for his transgressions; they are actual excerpts from Article 10, the most important of the 11 impeachment articles brought by Congress against an earlier president: Andrew Johnson.

“Article 10 provides this basis by making clear that speaking contemptuously about Congress and its members, with ‘intemperate’ and “inflammatory” attacks based on racial animus — as both Johnson and Trump did on multiple occasions — brings the presidency into ‘contempt, ridicule and disgrace,'” By Peter Irons, author of “A People’s History of the Supreme Court”

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