In 2010, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, I led the effort to impeach a federal judge from New Orleans named Thomas Porteous Jr. He was accused of multiple acts of corruption, some of which preceded his appointment to the federal bench, and making false statements during his confirmation hearing. After a lengthy impeachment process in the House, the Senate convicted him on all four charges and removed him from office.

Impeachment and removal for federal officials is an extraordinarily rare event. Judge Porteous was only the eighth federal official impeached and convicted in our nation’s history. As we investigated and drafted his articles of impeachment, we faced the consequential decision of whether to charge Judge Porteous with conduct before he took office.

We had to go back nearly a century to the 1912 trial and conviction of Judge Robert Archibald to find a precedent. After much consideration, we decided to charge him not only for actions while he was on the federal bench, but also for a corrupt scheme he entered into with a bail bond company while a state court judge, and for the false statements he made during his Senate confirmation process.

We determined that because Judge Porteous was accused of taking cash and gifts from lawyers whose cases he presided over in state court, there was little question that such actions were incompatible with his responsibility as a federal judge. How could someone in his courtroom be confident of a fair trial, knowing he had solicited and accepted bribes while a judge?