Actually Snow's point on "malfeasance" is addressed in the impeachment defense citing Justice Story's comments (highlighted):
"2. The Framers Believed that Impeachment Redresses Wrongful Public Conduct
The remedy of impeachment was designed only for those very grave harms not otherwise politically redressable. As James Wilson wrote, "our President . . . is amenable to [the laws] in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment."45/ That is why Justice Story described the harms to be reached by impeachment as those "offensive acts which do not properly belong to the judicial character in the ordinary administration of justice, and are far removed from the reach of municipal jurisprudence."46/
For these reasons, impeachment is limited to certain forms of potential wrongdoing only, and it is intended to redress only certain kinds of harms. Again, in Hamilton's words:
the subjects of [the Senate's impeachment] jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse of 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 to the society itself.47/
Early commentators on the Constitution are in accord on the question of impeachment's intended purpose. In Justice James Wilson's words, impeachments are "proceedings of a political nature . . . confined to political characters" charging only "political crimes and misdemeanors" and culminating only in "political punishments." 48/ And as Justice Story put the matter, "the [impeachment] power partakes of a political character, as it respects injuries to the society in its political character."49/ In short, impeachment was not thought to be a remedy for private wrongs -- or even for most public wrongs. Rather, the Framers "intended that a president be removable from office for the commission of great offenses against the Constitution."50/
Impeachment therefore addresses public wrongdoing, whether denominated a "political crime[ ] against the state,"51/ or "an act of malfeasance or abuse of office,"52/ or a "great offense[ ] against the federal government."53/
Ordinary civil and criminal wrongs can be addressed through ordinary judicial processes. And ordinary political wrongs can beaddressed at the ballot box and by public opinion. Impeachment is reserved for the most serious public misconduct, those aggravated abuses of executive power that, given the President's four-year term, might otherwise go unchecked.
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