A group of more than 750 professional and academic historians have signed onto a letter that urges Congress to impeach and remove President Donald Trump from office.
The letter includes signatures from a number of noted historians, including Ken Burns, Ron Chernow, Jon Meacham, and Douglas Brinkley, the Washington Post reported.
“We are American historians devoted to studying our nation’s past who have concluded that Donald J. Trump has violated his oath to ‘faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,'” the letter, posted on Medium, stated.
Impeachment was designed by the founders of our nation to deal with presidents who have behaved as Trump has, the historians added.
“President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president,” the letter said.
The signers pointed to the Ukraine scandal as proof of Trump’s abuse of power, in which he allegedly tried to coerce Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, for what many say appears to be a means for Trump to gain politically. The action is Trump’s “most hurtful [abuse] to the Constitution,” the letter said.
Pulitzer Prize winners, professors and filmmakers have signed a letter urging the House to impeach the president for the Ukraine scandal.#ImpeachmentTaskForce https://t.co/fi72mtc1ae
— Robert Cooper 🌊 (@RobertCooper58) December 17, 2019
In addition to the Ukraine scandal, attempts to obstruct witnesses and documents from within the administration are a “fictitious doctrine that, if tolerated, would turn the president into an elected monarch above the law.”
The House was right to seek those documents and witness testimonies “in pursuit of its constitutionally-mandated oversight role,” the letter stated.
The letter concluded with a call to action for members of Congress: to impeach and remove Trump from the office he currently occupies.
“It is our considered judgment that if President Trump’s misconduct does not rise to the level of impeachment, then virtually nothing does,” the letter said.