"Impeach" by Neal Katyal

"Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump" by Neal Katyal was a timely read. I picked it up in early/mid-January, a few weeks after the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, and finished it just as the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate for the forthcoming trial. 

Katyal is a former acting solicitor general of the United States, a leading Supreme Court lawyer, and a professor of law at Georgetown University where, his bio states, he has taught impeachment 29 times. So this is a subject with which he is quite familiar.

As the subtitle suggests, Katyal outlines a clear case for impeachment of the current president in this book, and why he believes it is necessary. But it's worth a read even if you disagree (?!) with him on that point, because it's a highly readable, concise little primer on the subject generally (just 158 pages of text, 214 if you include the appendix). Katyal delves into the history and constitutional background of impeachment, why the founders of the United States chose to include it in the constitution, how it's been used in the past (most notably during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton), and how it works. He concludes with recommendations of laws that Congress could & should pass to prevent future abuses of presidential power. There's also an appendix of documents pertaining to the Trump impeachment (including the whistleblower complaint of August 2019, and the summary of the July 25th call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine).

Four stars on Goodreads.

This was Book #3 read in 2020 to date, bringing me to 10% of my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 30 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 2 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. :)