For all the different ways Pelosi has made her case, an implicit principle underlies her argument: Yes, the president’s conduct is egregious, criminal even, but that egregious criminality does not require an impeachment or even the opening of an impeachment inquiry. Impeachment, in her view, is a constitutional tool the House is never required to use, an option, not a command. Consequently, the House’s decision not to impeach or to begin an inquiry is not a comment on whether or not impeachment is merited; Pelosi’s comments that Trump’s behavior is “lawless” and a “gross abuse of the power of the presidency” suggest that she believes it would be merited. In her view, the question of the merits of impeachment—that is, whether the president has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”—is a threshold judgment only.

Let’s take this position seriously for a moment and consider a few hypotheticals:

Imagine that instead of firing the FBI director in a fit of pique over the director’s refusal to state publicly that the president is not under investigation and to scrap a probe into the president’s former national security adviser, the president had ordered a drone strike on the FBI director’s house.

Or imagine that the president had repeatedly ordered the Secret Service to abduct underage girls to be brought into the Oval Office, where he had assaulted them. Imagine that he had threatened the victims’ families with arrest and prosecution if their children refused his advances. Imagine he also provided gifts to families that remained quiet, using funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes.