HYGO News Jerry Nadler's words in 1998 & the 2019 articles of impeachment
Jerry Nadler’s words in 1998 & the 2019 articles of impeachment
On December 10, 2019, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The announcement stood in stark contrast to Nadler’s own words during the 1998 Clinton impeachment proceedings, when he argued that a narrowly partisan impeachment would “lack legitimacy” and “call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.”
Nadler’s 2019 Impeachment Announcement
Standing before the press, Nadler declared: “Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The first article charged Trump with abuse of power. Nadler argued that “it is an impeachable offense for the President to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest.” He stated that this was “exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election, thus damaging our national security, undermining the integrity of the next election and violating his oath to the American people.”
Nadler also drew a line connecting the Ukraine allegations to earlier conduct, noting that “these actions, moreover, are consistent with President Trump’s previous invitations of foreign interference in our 2016 presidential election.”
The second article charged obstruction of Congress. Nadler stated that when Trump was caught and the House opened an impeachment inquiry, the president “engaged in unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry.” He argued that “a President who declares himself above accountability, above the American people and above Congress’s power of impeachment, which is meant to protect against threats to our democratic institutions, is a President who sees himself as above the law.”
Nadler concluded with a firm declaration: “We must be clear, no one, not even the President, is above the law.”
Nadler’s 1998 Arguments Against Clinton Impeachment
The video juxtaposes the 2019 announcement with Nadler’s floor speeches during the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, where his position on the standards for impeachment was dramatically different.
In 1998, Nadler argued forcefully against proceeding without broad public support: “And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other. Such an impeachment will produce the divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.”
Nadler went further, arguing the American public had already rendered their verdict: “The American people have heard the allegations against the President and they overwhelmingly oppose impeaching him. They elected President Clinton. They still support him. We have no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people.”
On the substance of the charges, Nadler was equally dismissive: “Mr. Speaker, the case against the President has not been made. There is far from sufficient evidence to support the allegations and the allegations, even if proven true, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.”
The Partisan Railroad Accusation
In his 1998 remarks, Nadler did not hold back in characterizing the Republican-led effort. He called it “clearly a partisan railroad job” and accused Republicans of hypocrisy, noting that “the same people who today tell us we must impeach the President for lying under oath, almost to a person voted last year to reelect the Speaker who had just admitted lying to Congress in an official proceeding.”
Nadler’s most memorable 1998 line came near the end of his remarks: “You may have the votes. You may have the muscle. But you do not have the legitimacy of a national consensus or of a constitutional imperative. This partisan coup d’etat will go down in infamy in the history of this nation.”
He argued that impeachment amounts to “an undoing of a national election” and that by proceeding, Republicans were “ripping from us our votes. They are telling us that our votes don’t count and that the election must be set aside.”
On the constitutional standard, Nadler argued in 1998 that “what the President has done is not a great and dangerous offense to the safety of the Republic in the words of George Mason. It is not an impeachable offense under the meaning of the Constitution.”
The Emotional Dimension of 1998
Nadler and other Democrats in 1998 framed their opposition to Clinton’s impeachment in stark emotional terms. “Today is a tragic day for our country,” Nadler said, “because while our young people are fighting in the Persian Gulf and bringing honor to our country, we are bringing dishonor to it with our hypocrisy here in this chamber.”
He accused the Republican majority of acting out of personal animus rather than constitutional duty: “Today the Republican majority is not judging the President with fairness, but impeaching him with a vengeance.” He added that the investigation had violated “fundamental principles which Americans hold dear: privacy, fairness, checks and balances.”
Nadler placed the blame squarely on partisan hatred: “We are here today because the Republicans in the House are paralyzed with hatred of President Clinton and until the Republicans free themselves of this hatred, our country will suffer.”
Additional Context from Full Remarks
The side-by-side comparison highlighted a tension that runs through every impeachment proceeding in American history: whether the standards for removing a president should remain fixed regardless of the facts, or whether they are necessarily shaped by the political context of each case.
In 1998, Nadler argued that impeachment without bipartisan consensus was inherently illegitimate and dangerous. In 2019, leading an impeachment effort that was supported almost exclusively by his own party, Nadler made no mention of the consensus standard he had championed two decades earlier. Instead, he focused on the factual case that Trump had abused his power and obstructed Congress’s constitutional oversight authority.
Republicans seized on the contradiction, pointing to Nadler’s own words as evidence that the 2019 impeachment was the very type of partisan exercise he had warned against. Democrats countered that the underlying conduct in the two cases was fundamentally different — Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about a personal matter, while Trump was accused of leveraging foreign policy to benefit his reelection campaign.
Key Takeaways
- Jerry Nadler introduced two articles of impeachment against President Trump on December 10, 2019, charging abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine and obstruction of Congress for defying the impeachment inquiry.
- In 1998, Nadler argued that “there must never be a narrowly voted impeachment” supported by one party and opposed by the other, calling the Clinton impeachment a “partisan coup d’etat” that would “go down in infamy.”
- The stark contrast between Nadler’s 1998 and 2019 positions became a central point of Republican criticism, while Democrats argued the factual differences between the Clinton and Trump cases justified the shift in approach.