Do you guys really not understand noncompliance vs criminal activity?
I am sure there are many like you who are of the thought that if the violation is non-criminsl it is necessarily unimportant. I would disagree.
We all know of the Constitutional concept of Separation of Powers. As the GAO explains Congress enacted the law requiring certain activities and the President, for whatever reason, declined to perform them as required.
The actions alleged of noncompliance of that law in his official capacity do not appear to be criminal, since there is no criminal penalty associated with them, whether they were policy or politically driven. The action would simply be a failure to discharge what was his public duty under that law, that it, to forward aid to Ukraine.
The failure to properly discharge a public duty by a public official is commonly known by the terms malfeasance or misfeasance or nonfeasance and can certainly vary in degree. The President's actions were simply a failure by him to perform his fiduciary duty of complying with and performing acts in furtherance of effectuating laws passed by Congress.
The Constitution provides that impeachment is the remedy for undertaking various acts including "high crimes and misdemeanors."
As explained in
this commentary published by the Federalist Society, the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" as utilized at the time of the ratification of the Constitution was not limited to criminal violations. Rather, as that commentary posits, "We best capture the meaning of the phrase 'high . . . Misdemeanors' when we think of it as referring to breaches of fiduciary duty. High misdemeanors are not limited to commission of crimes, but they do not include mere political differences. While violations of the criminal law provide grounds for impeachment, high misdemeanors encompass breaches of the duties of loyalty, good faith, and care, and of the obligations to account and to follow instructions (including the law and Constitution) when administering one’s office."
Thus, while not criminal in modern parlance, "mere noncompliance" can certainly have substantial, significant and serious consequences under traditional Constitutional views.