Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, said at the House Judiciary Committee's first impeachment hearing on Wednesday that if President Trump's dealings with Ukraine are not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable

"I just want to stress that if what we're talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created the Constitution, including impeachment, to protect against. If Congress concludes they're going to give a pass to the president here, as Professor Karlan suggested earlier, every other president will say, okay, then I can do the same thing and the boundaries will just evaporate."

— Gerhardt

Why it matters: Gerhardt is one of the three legal scholars called by Democrats to discuss the constitutional grounds for impeachment. His assessment that Trump's abuse of power was so egregious that it demands action will be used to bolster Democrats' argument that they have no choice but to impeach.

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