By Laurence Kotlikoff

Originally posted at Forbes, March 2017

High crimes and misdemeanors are, of course, necessary for impeaching the president. But what exactly constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors?

No one knows for sure, as the Constitution’s framers appear to have intentionally left Congress to devise its own potentially time-varying definition. Indeed, while in Congress, former President Gerald Ford defined an impeachable offense as “whatever a majority in the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” MORE