tonight, a conversation with allan lichtman about his text which is about impeachment throughout history. allan lichtman, coming up, in just a moment. ♪ ♪ >>> and by contributions to your pbs station, from viewers like you, thank you. ♪ >>> allan lichtman is an author and professor of history at american university. he joins us tonight from washington. good to have you on the program, sir. >> great to be with you. >> before i jump into the book, let me start with a clip. today, president trump was in israel, standing alongside their p.m., mr. netanyahu. listen to what mr. trump had to say. >> just so you understand, i never mentioned the word or the name israel. never mentioned it in that conversation. they were all saying i did. so, you have another story wrong. never mentioned the world israel. >> professor, i don't know how you hear that. but it sounds to me at the very least, that was an implicit admission that the president was running his mouth about something in the oval office with the russians. >> he was running his mouth, apparently, about thing hess shouldn't have been talking

allan lichtman, coming up, in just a moment. ♪

joining us now, allan lichtman from american university. is something you know well, my friend. allan, first off, the definition that 530 put out, is that the way you would teach it? >> well, a little bit. maybe the last one. look as i point out in my book "the case for impeachment" you have a constitutional crisis when our institution -- our democratic institutions are being threatened and our checks and balances aren't working. now, the framers understood that a rogue president could crash through our checks and balances and in their wisdom they provided an ultimate safeguard to avoid a constitutional crisis. and that is a constitutional, peaceful remedy, the remedy of impeachment. it is time to begin the impeachment study. not a prosecutor who would serve at trump's pleasure and they take years to do their work and i would say to president trump if you are telling the truth, and there is nothing to any of these allegations against you, then come clean to the house judiciary committee and encourage all of members of your team to testify u

our guest, allan lichtman. , a later, caitlin flanagan piece on how late night television fueled the rise of donald trump. we are back in a moment. please stay with us. ♪ >> today at 6:00 p.m. eastern, on a black women for spies for

washington journal continues. ] host: we want to welcome back to c-span allan lichtman, who teaches at the american university. his book, "the case for impeachment." thank you for being with us. larry writes this, professor of harvard university -- trump must be impeached, here's why. a long time ago, i wrote my book, and in it, i outlined eight possible grounds for the impeachment of donald trump, which indicated he was the first term president, most vulnerable for impeachment in all of history. it is not politics, it is not country. i wrote it as a deep historical analysis for the history of the impeachment process prior to the presidency. i wrote it so people could arm themselves with the knowledge of when trump might have crossed the line to begin impeachment. you were one of the few who would predict that donald trump would win. what was your methodology? guest: that was a formal mathematical model. i ignored the pundits, i did not look at polls and did not follow the day-to-day events of the campaign. whether it is a changed election or not. i looked at the vulnerabilities of the

we heard from allan lichtman earlier who said the components are there.lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings. do you believe we are at that juncture? >> we're not there yet. here's what we need to do. we need to look at whether -- i didn't even think it was obstruction until i heard about the demand for loyalty. first we need to look at whether the law was violated here and in other regards. the president is accepting, for example, foreign government cash and benefits. that's prohibited by the constitution. that's another part of. this here you have an apparent demand for loyalty. in other words, perhaps don't let the investigation touch me. then an implicit threat if you're not loyal you'll be fired. then you have the firing. that starts to smack of obstruction. then you have a warning about tapes on twitter. that sounds like witness intimidation, both of those are legal violations. so all this stuff starts to add up. what i'm saying is we need to have an independent look at it. it's got to be looked at in congress. i think 9/11 style commission

. >> allan lichtman's argument he was making was he was accusing this white house, this president, oftrying to get in the middle of an ongoing investigation which would provoke -- which he says did provoke the firing of comey and that was the violation, that obstruction. so one republican who has been very critical of the president is senator ben sass. here's what he had to say about the impact of the president's firing of comey. >> i'm not sure how this president makes lots of decisions, so i honestly don't know. but i do know that we are in the midst of a civilization warping crisis of public trust and we need to talk honestly about our institutions that need to be restored and need to have the ability for people in five and eight and ten years to trust these institutions. >> so, brian, your reaction to that? the civilization-warping crisis. >> well, we're in an odd time. and i think he's got a point but i don't think that's a partisan issue. i think so many americans don't trust our politicians from both sides of the aisle. and people's temperatures have turned so far up. people ar

here to try and unpack all of this, allan lichtman, a political historian, offer of the case for impeachmentong with matt ford, associate editor for "the atlantic." allan, first to you. is this the first time that a president has been under this many investigations at the same time? how does this compare? >> oh, it's uncomparable, unfortunately. look, it took some five years to get anywhere this deep into the watergate investigation. we're at just four months. but there is a way to resolve all this, and it is in the constitution. that's what i wrote about in my book, it is called "impeachment." i'm not saying we should be impeaching the president, but all of these investigations need to be put together, as it was in watergate, in an impeachment investigation by the house judiciary committee that would take into account all potential impeachable charges. collusion with the russians. obstruction of justice. conflicts of interest. and put it all together. here's what i say to donald trump, if what you say is true, that you've never done anything wrong in the campaign or as president, you should