What is an impeachable offense? Rep. Maxine Waters, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says the definition is purely political: “whatever Congress says it is—there is no law.” She’s wrong.

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Framers debated impeachment of a president. Some argued for the power of Congress to remove the president for “maladministration” or other open-ended terms that appeared in several state constitutions. Others, including James Madison, opposed such vague criteria, fearful that they would turn the republic into a British-style parliamentary system, in which Congress could remove a president over political differences—effectively a vote of no confidence. That, Madison argued, would be the “equivalent to tenure during pleasure of the Senate.”

The Framers wanted an independent president who could be removed only for genuine wrongdoing. So they agreed to the criteria that became part of the Constitution: “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton elaborated on the meaning of “high” crimes: “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself” (emphasis added).

Hamilton didn’t say the process of impeachment is entirely political. He said the offense has to be political. He continued: “The prosecution of [such offenses] will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly, or inimical, to the accused. In many cases, it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side, or on the other; and in such cases, there will always be the greater danger, that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”