Impeachment Explainer | Pros, Cons, Debate, Arguments, Federal Government, President, Supreme Court, & Congress – Britannica
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The U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. House of Representatives the sole power to formally charge a federal official with committing a crime or an abuse of power through a process called impeachment. The articles of impeachment (the charges of wrongdoing) can be initiated by any member of the House, and if the articles of impeachment are approved in the House by a majority vote, the official is considered impeached and then goes to trial in the U.S. Senate, which has the sole power to try all impeachments.If the impeached official is the U.S. president, the judge presiding over the Senate trial is the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. If an official is convicted by two-thirds of the senators present for the trial, the official will be removed from office. All federal government officials, including the president and vice president and Supreme Court justices, can be impeached. [1] [2] [29]
According to Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” [7]
Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers No. 65 on March 7, 1788, that the grounds for impeachment “are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust,” adding that impeachment was “designed as a method of NATIONAL INQUEST into the conduct of public men.” [4] [8] [9]
As Charlie Savage, Washington correspondent for The New York Times, explains,
The term “high crimes and misdemeanors” came out of the British common law tradition: it was the sort of offense that Parliament cited in removing crown officials for centuries. Essentially, it means an abuse of power by a high-level public official. This does not necessarily have to be a violation of an ordinary criminal statute. [4]
According to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution, impeachment can only be initiated in the U.S. House of Representatives. The term “impeachment” refers to formal charges being filed (similar to an indictment). The person being charged does not have to leave office after being impeached by the House, instead, they will go to trial in the Senate. [3] [5] [10]
The process in the House can vary. It may begin with the House Judiciary Committee investigating and recommending articles of impeachment, which are formal written allegations of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” that the Committee believes warrant a trial. The House could form a special panel to investigate or skip the committee step altogether. [4] [5] [10]
According to law professor Stephen Vladeck at the University of Texas:
The Constitution actually says nothing about the process the House is supposed to follow when it comes to impeachment inquiries, other than that it eventually has to approve articles of impeachment before sending the matter to the Senate. [11]
Regardless of which path is taken, the result is the articles of impeachment. The full House then votes on the articles. [4] [5]
If at least one article gets a majority vote in the House, the federal official has been impeached (meaning formally charged with misconduct). [4]
After the House adopts the articles of impeachment, the process moves to the U.S. Senate. The Senate has the sole power to try impeachment cases at trial, according to Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7 of the Constitution. U.S. Representatives from the House act as prosecutors, called “managers.” The impeached official may choose their own defense counsel. [4] [5] [7] [9] [10]
No set rules for the Senate trial exist. Instead, a resolution is passed in the Senate laying out trial procedure before the trial begins.
If the official is not convicted, they remain impeached but is considered acquitted and not removed from office. [4]
If two-thirds of the Senate, acting as the jury, find the official guilty of the articles of impeachment, the official is removed from office without possibility of appeal. In the case of a U.S. president being convicted, the vice president would then become president in accordance with the rules of presidential succession. The Senate could then disqualify the impeached president from ever holding public office again with a simple majority vote. [3] [4] [5] [10]
The House of Representatives has impeached 21 people since 1797:
On July 10, 2024, House Democrats introduced articles of impeachment against Supreme Court associate justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. The articles against them, brought by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), focused on gifts from wealthy Americans with an interest in cases before the Supreme Court and the justices’ failure to recuse themselves from cases in which there may have been a conflict of interest, including cases against Donald Trump and cases regarding the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack The justices were not impeached. [27]
Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached: Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1804 for arbitrary and oppressive conduct of trials. He was acquitted in March 1805 after a Senate trial. [28]
House Republicans voted to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a 214–213 vote on February 13, 2024. Mayorkas is only the second cabinet member to ever be impeached (the first was William W. Belknap, U.S. Secretary of War, who was impeached and acquitted in 1876). Mayorkas was impeached on two articles: “willfull and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” specifically immigration law, which contributed to the “border catastrophe,” according to House Republicans, and “breach of public trust” for not “faithfully discharging” his duties. [23]
The House of Representatives was scheduled to deliver the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the U.S. Senate on April 10, 2024, but it delayed the delivery to April 16, due to concerns the Senate would not commit to a trial. On April 17, 2024, the Senate voted 51–48 (with an additional “present” vote) along party lines to dismiss the first article of impeachment because a majority believed it did not meet the constitutional requirement of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” A 51–49 vote dismissed the second article along party lines on the same grounds. The dismissal marks the first time the Senate did not hold a trial for articles of impeachment brought by the House. [24] [25] [26]
Three U.S. presidents have been impeached, but no U.S. president has been convicted in the Senate trial that followed the impeachments and removed from office. [3]
Presidents Bill Clinton (in 1998) and Andrew Johnson (in 1868) were also impeached—the former for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and the latter for supposedly illegally dismissing his secretary of war—but both were also acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Pres. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face almost certain impeachment and removal from office for his involvement in the Watergate scandal. [3] [4] [5] [13] [14] [15] [17]
Pres. Donald Trump is the only sitting president to be impeached twice; the U.S. Senate acquitted him each time. Trump was impeached for the first time on December 18, 2019. The articles of impeachment charged “abuse of power” for soliciting Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election to Trump’s advantage and “obstruction of Congress” for defying subpoenas issued by Congress. Trump’s January 16–February 5, 2020, first impeachment trial resulted in acquittal by the Senate. Both votes were along party lines, though Mitt Romney (R-UT) voted to convict on Article I (“abuse of power”) and acquit on Article II (“obstruction of Congress”). [6] [15]
Trump was impeached for a second time on January 13, 2021, one week before he left office. Trump was impeached on one article of impeachment: “incitement of insurrection” for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in which
a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice Pres., interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.
Trump’s February 9–13, 2021, second impeachment trial resulted in a second acquittal by the Senate. The vote was again mostly along party lines, though seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
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