https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/why-impeachment-inquiry-legally-legitimate/601165/
"Yet, in the president’s world, the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want as president.” That is not what the Constitution allows. All powers, even those of the president, are limited and subject to checks and balances to ensure their proper and legal exercise. There is no law that requires blindly following a president and assisting in a cover-up (for example, by editing and storing the transcript of a phone call on the nation’s most secret server, which ismeant only for the most sensitive national-security data). And there is no privilege that bars any official from disclosing evidence about criminal activities and abuses of power. But there is a Constitution, which the president and all his people swore to uphold, and which places limits on the presidency. There is also a law protecting the identity of whistle-blowers, one that Trump has been charged to follow but instead has been trying to break. If you add up the nonsense that the president’s defenders have proliferated and his protestation that the Constitution allows him to do whatever he wants, their proposed result is disturbing: an executive who can shut down an impeachment inquiry and protect from disclosure anything done by anyone in the executive branch, and who is immune to criminal investigation and allowed to defy subpoenas. This is not the president our Constitution established. He would be a king, in spite of the fact that the Founders’ generation rebelled against one. They set out to create a presidency that was accountable to Congress if the occupant abused power and breached the public’s trust. Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the impeachment inquiry destroy their vision."
