Quotes from Jeffrey Toobin

In this way, the Hearsts became the symbol of the overly lenient parents of the era and a counterpoint to the Republican administration's voice of discipline and order.

The SCIF had strict rules against the possession or use of cell phones, and there were cubbyholes for members to place their devices before they entered. But the Republican demonstrators refused to surrender their phones and marched into the hearing room, some of them transmitting photos of the action. This, of course, was a grievous security violation.

Until these interviews, it had been a theoretical question—an abstraction, not grounded in the facts of the investigation. But now there was evidence to make the issue real: Could Mueller—could any federal prosecutor—indict a sitting president of the United States?

In personal and political terms, Trump was incapable of empathy. Dirt on his political opponents was "big stuff"; the American national interest, as well as the lives of Ukrainians at war, was not. There was no need for a more complicated explanation for the root of the scandal that would soon engulf the president.

As The Guardian put it, Sekulow came up with a plan, at the height of the recession, that pushed "poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60 million to Sekulow, his family and their businesses." The money has gone to companies controlled by his wife, sons, brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew.

Rehnquist was just reflecting his shifting role, from outsider to the institutional embodiment of the Court.

He concluded by addressing his father directly: "Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union, to come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth.

We should entrust to the people the most fundamental decision of a democracy; namely, who should lead their country." This Republican argument, which was made so often, was political cowardice dressed up as democratic deference. Impeachment existed precisely because the Framers believed that sometimes Congress should not wait for the voters to make a change. To pass the buck to their constituents, as so many Republican senators did, was to shirk their constitutionally mandated duty.

To pass the buck to their constituents, as so many Republican senators did, was to shirk their constitutionally mandated duty. This

Gun-carrying men are not just motivated by crime and insecurity but also by a loss of American values, a loss of masculine dignity, and a loss of confidence in the state.

Still, the whistle-blower served Trump's need for an enemy—a target for his wrath and blame. If Trump had accomplices—people like Nunes who were willing to sanction his lying and bullying—that was so much the better.

The president instructed the White House counsel to "correct" the Times story. This was different from the president's previous actions. This wasn't mere venting. Now Trump was asking a subordinate to create a false record about the subject of a pending grand jury investigation.

The Mueller Report spelled it out clearly. Trump told Comey to lay off Michael Flynn; when Comey didn't, Trump fired Comey. Trump tried to undermine Mueller, and then he ordered McGahn to oust the prosecutor; then Trump told McGahn to lie about it. These were illegal acts—in conception and execution. These were crimes, even if Mueller stopped short of saying that they were.

On the other hand, Trump's abuse of power regarding Ukraine had more grave consequences. He put Ukrainian lives at risk; he rewarded Russian aggression; he jeopardized American national security; he misled our allies; he undermined Congress's power of the purse; and he lied to everyone about what he was doing and why.

The Framers created impeachment precisely to thwart this kind of conduct, which was, in Hamilton's words, "the abuse or violation of some public trust.

Trump neither knew nor cared about the distinction between his personal lawyer and the attorney general of the United States.

In a less polarized environment, the president and Congress would have responded to these findings with bipartisan outrage,

the phone call was the linchpin of the impeachment case against Trump, it was far from the only evidence

Trump sometimes bantered about Vietnam with radio host Howard Stern. He referred to trying to avoid sexually transmitted diseases on the dating scene as "my personal Vietnam." "It's pretty dangerous out there," he said in 1993. "It's like Vietnam.

mail drop as the return address.

abuse of power regarding Ukraine had more grave consequences. He put Ukrainian lives at risk; he rewarded Russian aggression; he jeopardized American national security;

At every turn, Mueller chose public service over private gain; Trump did the opposite.

After that time, he was not in the real estate business as much as the Donald Trump business. He licensed his name to an enormous number of products—including clothing, wine, water, jewelry, steak, vodka, and a university (of sorts)—though none lasted very long or made much or any money for his partners.

Mueller and his team were disciplined, restrained, and orderly; they avoided publicity, and their presentations to the public—especially the Mueller Report, which closed their work—hewed scrupulously to provable facts. Trump was in every way their opposite, and his public statements were medleys of invective and falsehood.