Donald J. Trump has been impeached. He should be removed from office.

A layman’s understanding of the political crimes charged against the president

I have heard a lot of invocations of the founding fathers’ intent for the mechanism of impeachment. It was apparently feared that it could be used as a partisan tool, though the process is transparently political. The most rational way of understanding how impeachment works is that it is the political death sentence for a public servant when enforced, since an impeached officer is stripped of all duties and responsibilities and barred from ever serving in the office again.

Impeachment is a divisive process, demonstrated in the weeks and months that have led to the historic vote in the House of Representatives on December 18 to impeach Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. It creates division, but it surprised me how simple the divide is to recognize: one side reliably embodies the prosecutor, the other embodies the defense.

Republicans have decried the process in many ways, some arguments with merit but most without. Some arguments rely on ostensibly innocent misunderstandings of how impeachment works: for example, one catch phrase Republicans employed against the lead investigator Adam Schiff was that as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence he was “judge, jury, and executioner,” though his role is very plainly analogous to a lawyer working with detectives to…