Originally Posted: October 23, 2018
More than 40 years after working on the impeachment of Richard Nixon, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman is back on the case.
This time, it’s with a book: “The Case for Impeaching Trump.”
“The book really forced me to think this through,” Holtzman, a New York Democrat and member of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, said during a recent telephone interview. “There’s so much news every day being thrown at you that it’s hard to separate it all out. When I did, it became clear there was a basis for proclaiming the president had committed high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“The Case for Impeaching Trump” is part of a wave of new books and reissues of older works that is inspired by ongoing debate about President Trump and such allegations as collusion with the Russians during his 2016 campaign and his May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, who had been looking into Trump’s Russia ties. While few imagine Trump’s actual expulsion — a two-thirds vote in the Senate would be required — polls do show backing for impeachment that rivals calls for Nixon’s removal in the final year of his administration. An August Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll found 44 percent saying that the House of Representatives should seriously consider impeaching Trump, and 47 percent opposing. A March 1974 Harris poll, released five months before Nixon’s resignation, had 43 percent supporting his removal.
Holtzman’s book is being published in November by the Skyhorse imprint Hot Books as a response to Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case Against Impeaching Trump,” which the publisher released over the summer. Dershowitz, whose book briefly appeared on The New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction bestseller list, is a retired Harvard Law professor (Holtzman was a former student) and longtime Democrat who has often defended Trump in his media appearances on Fox News and other outlets.
Other recent works include Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz’s “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” and Allan J. Lichtman’s “The Case for Impeachment,” both written by liberal critics of Trump. READ MORE