Say WHAT!?

Alan Dershowitz- a legendary lawyer who, like Rudy Giuliani, has traded a place of honor and respect in history for a place of contempt and ridicule by choosing to defend the indefensible- says that "abuse of power is not an impeachable offense."

Huh?

Um... isn't that what impeachment is, you know, about? If abuse of power isn't an impeachable offense, then what in the world is? 

The Constitution doesn't define what is or is not an impeachable offense beyond saying that Federal officers may be impeached and removed from office for "high crimes and misdemeanors." The word "and" precludes any understanding of the word
"misdemeanors" as a subset of "crimes" that fall short of being felonies. It cannot be anything more or less than a synonym for "misdeeds" without doing violence to the dictionary and the rules of English grammar. In the past, Federal judges have been impeached and removed from office for being drunk on the bench, for example.

Whatever the House of Representatives decides constitutes a "high crime" or a "high misdemeanor" is, under the Constitution, an impeachable offense. To draw the line any more tightly than that is to go beyond what the Consitution itself says.

ADDENDUM: Here is a useful article on the history of the question. As it notes, the argument Dershewicz makes is rejected by most constitutional scholars. In fact, as it points out, not only Dershewicz himself but Attorney General William Barr have argued in the past that the Constitution does not require that something be a crime for it to be grounds for impeachment and removal from office. The focus of the Founders in providing for impeachment, it suggests, is not so much on criminal behavior as on a failure to meet the obligations undertaken in an officer's oath of office. 

This is simply not an intellectually honest or respectable argument. It's not even a coherent argument. And having made it, Mr. Derschowitz exposes himself to the ridicule not only of every American who has ever bothered to read the Constitution but of history.

It will be hard to take anything he says as a lawyer seriously from here on out