High crimes and misdemeaners

With regard to the trading of five terrorists for a deserter, Andrew McCarthy contends:

the president’s failure to comply with a dubious statute is a mere footnote to his truly egregious offense: replenishing enemy forces at a time when the enemy is still conducting offensive terrorist operations against our armed forces. It would be difficult to fathom a more outrageous dereliction of duty by the commander-in-chief.

Moreover, if you want to fret over statutory violations, I would spend less time on the 30-day notice law and more on the federal criminal law that makes material support to terrorists a serious felony. The president has knowingly provided personnel—key, experienced, highly effective jihadists—to terrorist organizations that are still very much at war with the United States. That is material support to terrorism.

High crimes and misdemeanors, as Hamilton observed, are acts that “proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” A commander-in-chief who replenishes the forces of enemies knowing those enemies are still unleashing violent jihad against our troops, a president who is intentionally duplicitous in his dealings with Congress, profoundly abuses his public trust. That is a good deal more important than the 30-day notification requirement.

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