My mother’s line is still the best: Bill Clinton was guilty of “low crimes and misdemeanors.” But what, exactly, is meant by “high crimes and misdemeanors?” Is it a legal or a political standard?
Having considered the history of the issue, including its English political antecedent, it is my opinion that “high crimes and misdemeanors” means an action or series of actions that seriously jeopardizes the normal functioning of our political system. It is thus a political, not a legal, standard. Some actions that would qualify as crimes do not meet the standard, and some actions that are not crimes would. It includes misfeasance as well as malfeasance. It encompasses corruption and gross incompetence as well as deliberate abuses of power.
And so, for example, proof of a quid pro quo between the Russian government and the Trump campaign would be legitimate grounds for impeachment even though “collusion” is not a crime, because active collaboration with a foreign government for self-interested reasons is exactly the kind of behavior that the Founding Fathers wanted to prevent. Would Trump actually be impeached if evidence of this nature came to light? Given the current state of the GOP, I very much doubt it.