Trump was impeached in the House in December after lawmakers brought articles for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in relation to his alleged solicitation of foreign interference in the upcoming presidential election.
But though the House impeached him, he was handily acquitted at the end of his Senate trial. Since Trump was found not guilty by the Senate, any second impeachment attempt must deal with a new set of accusations. One other president, Richard Nixon, was the subject of formal impeachment proceedings in and for obstruction of justice and abuse of power related to a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate in Washington, D.
But after an incriminating tape was uncovered, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. It depends. The House only requires a simple majority to impeach. It could move to pass an impeachment resolution and articles of impeachment without an investigation or a vote by the House Judiciary Committee. But usually the process is much more drawn out: Clinton's took 72 days, and Trump's 49 days in Removal is another issue entirely. To swiftly remove a president, both chambers—and parties—would have to work together.
The Constitution is largely mute on how a Senate trial must be conducted. It only requires three things: that senators take an oath, that the chief justice of the Supreme Court preside, and that conviction takes a two-thirds majority vote. The Senate abides by a set of impeachment trial rules it adopted in , and each Senate approves trial proceedings specific to each case.
But the Senate majority leader has considerable leeway in determining how the trial itself plays out. The speediest impeachment trial ever, Trump's trial in , took 18 days.
To expedite a trial, lawmakers would have to be willing to set tradition aside. But even with an expedited trial, the Senate would need a supermajority—67 out of senators—to convict. Even if a president leaves office before removal, it doesn't preclude an attempt to permanently disqualify him from future office.
Though there is no precedent with a president, the House did impeach former War Secretary William Belknap on five articles of impeachment in after his resignation.
A majority voted to convict Belknap in the Senate, but a supermajority was not achieved, and he was acquitted. If a Senate trial were to take place after Trump's term ends on January 20, it would occur with a different balance of party power. Democrats just picked up two Senate seats in runoff elections in Georgia and will have a majority once those votes are certified.
Since those seats will create a split in the Senate, the Democrats will not officially have a majority until President-Elect Joe Biden takes office and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris becomes president of the Senate. If the House were to delay sending the impeachment to the Senate until January 20, they could do so with assurance that presumptive Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will order a trial.
Although Pelosi had originally threatened impeachment only if Vice President Mike Pence did not act to remove the president using the 25 th Amendment, there are advantages to pursuing impeachment instead. The 25th Amendment can only be invoked by the vice president and a majority of Cabinet members, but Congress controls the impeachment process. If a vice president and Cabinet were to remove a president under the 25 th Amendment, that president would still be able to run for future office.
If an impeachment trial resulted in a conviction, on the other hand, lawmakers could vote to bar a president from ever serving again. All rights reserved. American Insurrection. In a historic first, a U. Here's what happens next. Capitol on Tuesday, Feb. Trump delivered the address after having been impeached by the House of Representatives.
In a speech on the floor of the House, Congressman Ford defined an impeachable offense as "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; Cole and Todd Garvey noted that, [1]. The Constitution expressly provides that the president and vice president of the United States may be impeached.
The Constitution further provides that all civil officers of the United States may be impeached. Joseph Story , in his Commentaries on the Constitution , wrote that "all officers of the United States, therefore, who hold their appointments under the national government, whether their duties are executive or judicial, in the highest or in the lowest departments of the government, with the exception of officers in the army and navy, are properly civil officers within the meaning of the constitution, and liable to impeachment.
The Constitution, in the Appointments Clause , provides the president with the power to appoint officers of the United States which are subject to Senate confirmation and distinguishes these officials from those inferior officers that the Congress may, by law, grant the president the sole power to appoint i. The U.
Supreme Court further recognized the distinction in the two categories under the appointments clause, categorizing these as principal officers and inferior officers respectively, in Edmond v. United States. In Buckley v. Valeo , the court defined an officer as "any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States. Therefore, as Cole and Garvey note, [1]. Any official exercising 'significant authority' including both principal and inferior officers, would therefore qualify as a 'civil Officer' subject to impeachment.
This view would permit Congress to impeach and remove any executive branch 'officer,' including many deputy political appointees and certain administrative judges. William Blount of Tennessee was the first individual ever impeached by the United States House of Representatives and, to this day, is the only member of Congress ever to have been impeached. The House impeached Blount on July 7, , for allegedly conspiring to incite Native Americans and frontiersmen to attack the Spanish lands of Florida and Louisiana in order to give them to England.
After the impeachment vote in the House, but before Blount's impeachment trial in the Senate, the Senate voted to expel Blount under provisions of Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution. Due to a lack of jurisdiction in Tennessee , where Blount fled after his conviction, the Senate could not extradite Blount for his impeachment trial.
Two years later, in , the Senate determined that Blount was not a civil officer under the definition of the Constitution and, therefore, could not be impeached. The Senate dismissed the charges against Blount for lack of jurisdiction. Since , the House has not impeached another member of Congress.
On February 24, , President Andrew Johnson became the first sitting president to be impeached. Following Congress' passage of the Tenure of Office Act, forbidding the president from removing federal officials without the approval of Congress, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replaced him with Ulysses S.
Johnson hoped to challenge the constitutionality of the Act. The House charged him with violating the Act and passed an impeachment resolution Johnson was acquitted by the Senate on May 16, , by a vote of , one vote short of two-thirds.
Seven Republican senators broke ranks with the party to prevent Johnson's conviction. President William Jefferson Clinton , the second president to be impeached, was charged by the U. House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, The first article of impeachment for perjury passed the House by a vote of , while the second vote on obstruction of justice passed by House Republicans accused Clinton of lying and having others lie, hiding the affair.
Two other charges, perjury in regards to an affair with Paula Jones and abuse of power, were rejected by the House. The perjury charge failed by a vote of while the obstruction of justice charge failed on a tied vote of Donald Trump was the third president to be impeached. He was impeached first in and a second time in On December 18, , the U. House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The first article passed by a vote of and the second On February 5, , the Senate acquitted him of abuse of power by a vote and of obstruction of Congress by a vote.
On January 13, , the House voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection related to the January 6 Capitol breach during electoral vote counting. On February 13, —after Trump had left office as a result of the presidential election —the Senate acquitted Trump.
A two-thirds vote was required to convict. Fifty-seven senators voted to convict, and 43 voted to acquit. Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached on March 2, , on charges of "criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain. Grant resignation papers earlier that day, and he stood trial before the Senate as a former government official, as agreed to by the Senate.
He was acquitted of all charges on August 1, Following the trial, the Senate agreed not to hold trials for government officials who offered resignation. As Justice Story recognized, "the states can exercise no powers whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the national government, which the constitution does not delegate to them No state can say, that is has reserved, what it never possessed.
Re-emphasizing this meaning of the Tenth Amendment's "reserved" authority vis-a-vis federal officials, the Court later explained in Cook v. Gralick :. The federal offices at stake "aris[e] from the Constitution itself. Because any state authority to regulate election to those offices could not precede their very creation by the Constitution, such power "had to be delegated to, rather than reserved by, the States.
Members of Congress are clearly federal officials, not state officers, and owe their existence and authority solely to the federal Constitution. As explained by the Supreme Court:. In that National Government, representatives owe primary allegiance not to the people of a State, but to the people of the Nation.
As Justice Story observed, each Member of Congress is 'an officer of the union, deriving his powers and qualifications from the constitution, and neither created by, dependent upon, not controllable by, the states Representatives and Senators are as much officers of the entire union as is the President.
As noted in the previous section, even the dissenting Justices in the U. Term Limits case, who would have found under the Tenth Amendment a "reserved" authority in the states with respect to the "qualifications" of Members of Congress, explicitly conceded that no such authority exists in the states to "recall, which the Framers denied to the States when they specified the terms of Members of Congress.
The United States Constitution establishes the exclusive qualifications for congressional office, sets the specific length of terms for Members of the House and for Senators, and expressly delegates to each house of Congress the authority to judge the elections and qualifications of, and to discipline and to remove its own Members. State attorneys general, as well as state judicial bodies, when considering the merits of the issue of a proposed recall of a Member of Congress under state provisions have consistently found that such recall is neither provided for, permitted by, nor is it consistent with the provisions of the U.
The attorney general of Oregon in , for example, ruled that the state's recall provisions could not apply to a Member of Congress who is not actually a state official, but who holds his office pursuant to the U.
Constitution and is a federal constitutional officer. The opinion found that such recall provisions would interfere with the Congress's exclusive constitutional authority over the elections and qualifications of its own Members, noting that the "jurisdiction to determine the right of a representative in Congress to a seat is vested exclusively in the House of Representatives In Nevada, in , an attorney general opinion found that "there is no provision in [the U.
Constitution] for the removal of federal legislative officers prior to the end of their terms other than Article I, Section 5," and "[t]herefore, only the United States Senate or the House of Representatives can remove its own Members prior to the end of the terms for which they were elected, pursuant to Article I, Section 5.
In , the attorney general of Kansas, finding that "Members of congress are neither state officers nor local officers" as defined by Kansas statutes, and finding that the U. Constitution "reserves to the houses of congress" the authority to punish and remove from office their own Members by way of expulsion, provided a formal opinion that U.
Representatives and Senators could not be "recalled" under state provisions. Congress, the attorney general found:. As such power has been delegated to the federal government by the United States constitution, the United States constitution does not provide for any reservation of authority to the states to remove from office congressional officeholders.
In a similar manner, the attorney general of Louisiana ruled in that a Member of Congress representing the people of a congressional district in Louisiana could not be recalled under Louisiana law. The attorney general found that the "Constitution does not provide for, nor does it authorize, the recall of United States officials," that the power to remove a Member of Congress before the expiration of the Member's term is expressly delegated in the "United States Constitution to the respective House of Congress The attorney general of North Dakota ruled in , in an opinion upheld by the North Dakota supreme court, that "neither the Constitution nor laws of the State of North Dakota allow for the recall of a congressional officer, specifically a United States Senator.
It may be noted that in one instance in the s an attorney general of a state declined to find that a state administrative agency is barred from accepting a recall petition directed at a Member of Congress. In interpreting a state recall statute, the attorney general of Wisconsin noted in an opinion on May 3, , that an administrative agency, the state election board, upon presentation of a valid petition to recall a Member of Congress under the Wisconsin constitution, had no authority, in itself, to adjudicate and reject such petition without a ruling from a court.
When such matters have on rare occasions generated a ruling from a court, however, the courts which have decided the issue have thus far found that state recall laws are ineffective to override and substitute for the provisions of the U.
Constitution concerning the terms of and removal of federal officials such as Members of Congress. A federal court in , for example, dismissed a suit which attempted to compel the Idaho secretary of state to accept petitions recalling Senator Frank Church of Idaho. In the unreported judicial ruling, the court found that Senators are not subject to state recall statutes, and that such a state provision is inconsistent with the provisions of the U. Similarly, in , a state court in Michigan dismissed a petition effort to recall a Member of Congress under that state's recall statute.
Although an administrative entity had earlier approved the language of the recall petition, and despite the express language of the state law, the court granted an injunction against the continuation of the recall effort, finding "that pursuant to the text of Article I of the United States Constitution and by operation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, the recall provisions under Michigan law are ineffective to recall a Member of Congress.
In New Jersey, an intermediate appellate state court in refrained from ruling on the constitutionality of that state's recall provision, and refused to enjoin a recall effort against a sitting United States Senator, since the recall effort had not at that time garnered sufficient signatures to invoke an election under state law, and thus the court found that the matter was not yet ripe for adjudication.
Senators are unconstitutional From U. Supreme Court rulings and explanations regarding terms and qualifications of Members of Congress, as well as from several state judicial rulings and attorneys general opinions, it would appear that for a recall provision to be enforceable against a Member of Congress a constitutional amendment authorizing such a recall procedure would need to be adopted by the requisite number of states.
Although there have been some calls for a constitutional amendment authorizing national "referenda" or "initiatives," there has not been significant movement for a national recall provision.
Supporters of recall provisions see this mechanism as a device to assure regular and close oversight of elected public officials, and to make elected officials more continuously, rather than periodically, responsible and responsive to the will and desires of the electorate.
Those who oppose recall note that recall petitions generally need only a relatively small minority of the electorate to force a recall election of an official. With the threat of a recall election ever present, it is argued that an official may be deterred from, and penalized for, taking strong and clear political positions that could offend even a small, but vociferous and active political group.
It is contended that such small special interest or "single-issue" groups might effectively stymie an official by constantly occupying the official with the potential need to campaign and run in a recall election. It is also argued that complex governmental programs and policies may often need to function and to be evaluated over time; but with the threat of immediate recall, Members may be deterred in supporting long-term plans and programs for the country which may not bring immediate, short-term benefits to constituents.
House of Representatives [Deschler's precedents], Ch. Term Limits, Inc. Thornton, U. Gralike , U. Term Limits, Inc , U. Brown and Johnson, House Practice, th Cong. Powell v. McCormack , U. Disqualification of a Member on such grounds would still appear to require the specific action of the relevant house of Congress.
See case of Senator William Blount Tenn. Bartlett , 68 Mass. In addition to actual expulsions, note House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct's recommendations for expulsion of a Member for bribery in "Abscam" matter H. It should be noted, however, that the Senate Select Committee on Ethics recommended the expulsion of a Senator in who was not convicted of any crime, but who was found by the Committee to have abused the authority of his office in making unwanted sexual advances to women, enhancing his personal financial position, and for obstructing and impeding the Committee's investigation.
The expulsion order regarding Senator Sebastian was later revoked. Senator William Blount of Tennessee, July 8, Representative-elect John B. Clark of Missouri , Representative John W. Reid of Missouri , and Representative Henry C. Burnett of Kentucky Myers , Cong. Traficant, Jr. In Senate, see , e. In the House, note resignations of two Representatives, one in and one in after Committee recommendations of expulsion in H.
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