It's is utterly amazing reading the discussions the founders had regarding impeachment. Everything that they are saying today mirrors what was argued way back then. In the end, what the defense is saying etc is exactly everything that the founders rejected which is why the "high crimes and misdemeanors" is in there and that it is fairly broad in what it means.
After a short debate, the convention agreed to the language proposed in the Virginia Plan: the executive would “be removable on impeachment and conviction of malpractice or neglect of duty” – a broad standard that the delegates would later rewrite.
Mason, Madison, and Randolph all spoke up to defend impeachment on July 20, after Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania moved to strike it. “[If the president] should be re-elected, that will be sufficient proof of his innocence,” Morris argued. “[Impeachment] will render the Executive dependent on those who are to impeach.”
How familiar that sounds doesn't it? I found something else that indicated that "accountability" was what they looked to elections for. Certainly not something like impeachable offenses.
“Shall any man be above justice?” Mason asked. “Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?” A presidential candidate might bribe the electors to gain the presidency, Mason suggested. “Shall the man who has practiced corruption, and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt?”
Madison argued that the Constitution needed a provision “for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.” Waiting to vote him out of office in a general election wasn’t good enough. “He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation”— embezzlement—“or oppression,” Madison warned. “He might betray his trust to foreign powers.”
Randolph agreed on both these fronts. “The Executive will have great opportunities of abusing his power,” he warned, “particularly in time of war, when the military force, and in some respects the public money, will be in his hands.” The delegates voted, 8 states to 2, to make the executive removable by impeachment.
Sounds like today doesn't it?
Limiting impeachment to treason and bribery cases, Mason warned on September 8, “will not reach many great and dangerous offences.” To make his case, he pointed to an impeachment taking place in Great Britain at the time—that of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India.
[[charged Hastings with a mix of criminal offenses and non-criminal offenses, including confiscating land and provoking a revolt in parts of India.]]
Mason argued to his fellow delegates that Hastings was accused of abuses of power, not treason, and that the Constitution needed to guard against a president who might commit misdeeds like those alleged against Hastings.
Mason, fearful of an unchecked, out-of-control president, proposed adding “maladministration” [[basically just for being lousy at your job]] as a third cause for impeaching the president. Such a charge was already grounds for impeachment in six states, including Virginia.
But on this point, Madison objected. The scholarly Princeton graduate, a generation younger than Mason at age 36, saw a threat to the balance of powers he’d helped devise. “So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate,” he argued. In other words, Madison feared the Senate would use the word “maladministration” as an excuse to remove the president whenever it wanted.
So Mason offered a substitute: “other high crimes and misdemeanors against the State.” The English Parliament had included a similarly worded phrase in its articles of impeachment since 1450. This compromise satisfied Madison and most of the other Convention delegates. They approved Mason’s amendment without further debate, 8 states to 3, but added “against the United States,” to avoid ambiguity.
the convention’s Committee on Style and Revision, ......, deleted the phrase “against the United States.” Without that phrase, which explained what constitutes “high crimes,” many Americans came to believe that “high crimes” literally meant only crimes identified in criminal law.
When Mason argued that “the great powers of Europe, as France and Great Britain,” might corrupt the president, Randolph replied that it would be an impeachable offense for the president to violate the Constitution’s emoluments clause by taking payments from a foreign power.
And in an argument with Madison, Mason warned that a president could use the pardon power to stop an inquiry into possible crimes in his own administration. “He may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself,” Mason argued. “If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection?”
Impeachment, Madison responded, could impose the necessary check to a president’s abuse of the pardon power. “If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person,” Madison stated, “and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him.”
Alexander Hamilton predicted in Federalist Paper 65: “In many cases [impeachment] will connect itself with the preexisting factions ... and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
They also worried that Congress, which they viewed as the primary governing body, might use impeachment threats to bend a president’s policy decisions.
To mitigate this, the impeachment power was divided among the two chambers of Congress, and there was a two-thirds majority required to convict.
Plus, the standard for impeachment was changed from “maladministration” to the more stringent “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The partisan worries the founders had was exactly why the Senate was not to be an elected body. So happy that was changed in 1913 so that the current system is so weak and ineffective now. Despite his partisan concerns, Hamilton definitely supported impeachment and argued for the Senates role. I find it interesting how the founders intended that the Congress be the primary body. Today's state of things is a far cry from what they intended. Seems like they were right about so many things and the country is becoming more and more what they never wanted it to be. Sadly, those in office don't seem to care one bit and are willing assist in it's inevitable demise. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Every "empire" goes through this where it becomes more and more corrupt over time and eventually fails.
This quote from Hamilton regarding protecting the country from those with "demagogic tendencies" sounds ... familiar...
"When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'"
Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 65. “They are of a nature which may with particular propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they related chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
I simply cannot understand Dershowitz's arguments. One of the problems with him is that he argues everything from an acedemic standpoint. i.e., he would be well suited to being in a debate with the founders over what should and should not be in the constitution and what what would constitute impeachment. But him standing up there the way he did is just irresponsible in my opinion. He kept quoting from those that, for all I know, had agendas of their own. Did he even talk about the founders and what they said? I simply cannot see how anyone reading what the founders said and intended could think what much of what the defense has argued is in any way valid.
Bottom line, After going through reams of this stuff, I have little doubt that the founders would have impeached and convicted Trump in a second. I also think they would be appalled by what has become of their creation.
I was jumping around from site to site yanking out a few quotes here and there as a lot of it was "opinion" and I wanted to try and find quotes etc. I failed to note each and every site. Sorry, but here are a couple I used.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-founding-fathers-debate-over-what-constituted-impeachable-offense-180965083/https://www.npr.org/2019/11/18/779938819/fractured-into-factions-what-the-founders-feared-about-impeachment 
