“President Trump and his Administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process,” reads the letter from Pat Cipollone, who serves as counsel to the president. Cipollone also accuses House Democrats of violating the due process rights of the president and insists that impeachment is invalid if it isn’t begun by an official resolution. He continues: “Your transparent rush to judgment, lack of democratically accountable authorization, and violation of basic rights in the current proceedings make clear the illegitimate, partisan purpose of this purported ‘impeachment inquiry’. ”

It’s all a little dramatic. Cipollone goes on:

Your unprecedented action has left the president with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the executive branch and all future occupants of the office of the presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.

Most of this is nonsense. The Constitution only specifies the basics of impeachment: The House initiates it and the Senate votes on it. Everything else is left to the respective chambers. No particular process is required. The House is fully empowered to collect evidence, take testimony and subpoena witnesses without passing a resolution to announce it is considering impeachment. The House acts as a kind of grand jury — where the “Articles of Impeachment” correspond to the counts in an indictment — with no obligation to take witnesses from the defense. That will come later, if the House impeaches and the Senate holds a trial. In addition to its nakedly partisan claims, the White House is also making its case with constitutional language, but there is no constitutional support for its arguments.

But we shouldn’t get bogged down in the particulars of the letter or its tenuous relationship to the facts. The problem with the White House response is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s an assertion of unaccountable power. To call impeachment “illegitimate” and reject Congress’s ability to conduct oversight is to put forth a doctrine of presidential infallibility, an extreme form of Richard Nixon’s quip that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” To refuse cooperation and compliance is to challenge the constitutional prerogative of a coequal branch of government.

The framers understood that re-election wasn’t enough to compel good behavior from the chief executive. As James Madison argued during the constitutional convention of 1787, impeachment exists as a safeguard against the “incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief magistrate.” But Trump, speaking through Cipollone, rejects this. To this White House, elections are the only acceptable form of accountability. “The decision as to who will be elected President in 2020 should rest with the people of the United States, exactly where the Constitution places it.”

What’s worse is that, according to a longstanding opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, a president cannot be indicted while still in office. If impeachment is illegitimate and Trump intends to defy all congressional subpoenas and investigation, then he’s suddenly untethered the office from the entire constitutional system. He becomes what the framers feared — an elected king, answerable only to his supporters. (Here it’s worth noting the hypocrisy of relying on the Constitution when it justifies his own power — Trump is only president because of the Electoral College — and rejecting it when that power is challenged.)