You might’ve heard a thing or two about the impeachment inquiry current U.S. president Donald Trump is facing. Whether you’re sighing in relief or ready to take up the defense, it’s too soon to tell. Nearing the end of his term, Trump’s presidency has been filled with controversy, from his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries to his allegations of conspiracy and coordination with Russia and many more other memorable highlights. 📷
Currently, one of the allegations against Trump finally has ground to stand on. Allegations of improperly sought help from Ukraine to boost his chances of re-election have threatened to end Trump’s future presidency. Stemming from an anonymous whistleblower’s original complaint, the complaint is now backed with several former administration officials claiming that Trump has put his own political interests ahead of the country.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has convened the 235 House Democrats behind closed doors last month to announce that she would back an impeachment inquiry into Trump now that there was substantial evidence of a conspiracy. But what exactly does impeachment entail? Many people associate it with being fired from being president but it’s unfortunately much more complex than that.
Out of the forty-five U.S. presidents we’ve had, only four have faced formal impeachment inquiries and out of those, only two have actually been impeached. However, no president has ever been removed from office through impeachment. Instead, it has been used more as a way of filing formal charges against a president. The House is the one that initiates the impeachment inquiry while the Senate holds a trial on those charges to decide whether that president should remain in office. Since Republicans hold the Senate, the likeliness of Trump being removed from office is low.
The first U.S. president to face impeachment, Andrew Johnson, had big shoes to fill and a completely different direction from his legendary predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. His support of the Confederate side and alienation of the Radical Republicans led to his ultimate demise when he fired his Secretary of War, an ally of the Radical Republicans. This went directly against the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval. Not only did he go against the constitution, but his approach to Reconstruction was also damaging to Lincoln’s progress in civil rights through the pardoning of Confederate leaders and the vetoing of political rights for freedmen. A president undoing the progress of his liberal predecessor, now where have we heard that before? In the end, Johnson was impeached by the House but scarcely avoided being booted out of office by a single vote in the Senate.
The second U.S. president to be impeached was Bill Clinton, and boy was it a dumb one. The initial charges were involvement in the Whitewater Controversy, a legal scandal involving some real estate investments the Clintons had made. When no impeachable evidence was found in the investigation, Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel appointed to lead the investigation, looked to a different case. A tip from a case involving Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee who was accusing Clinton of sexual harassment, alleged that the president had been involved with a 21-year-old White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. While extramarital affairs in office are not necessarily unconstitutional as much as they are a question of character, lying under oath is. 20 hours of taped conversations between Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, a former White House colleague, one iconic blue dress, and a confessional from Lewinsky herself later, enough evidence had been collected to prove that Clinton had perjured himself in court. Despite this, Clinton was acquitted on all charges by the Senate and surprisingly enough, his acceptance rate peaked afterward.
The only U.S. president who must definitely have been removed from office through impeachment pulled the trigger himself. Richard Nixon, the less likable counterpart to his much-more-famous predecessor, John F. Kennedy, truly tried to make a difference in his presidency. Regardless he could not escape the consequences of the Watergate Scandal, a conspiracy that connected Nixon with the break-in of the Democratic National Headquarters for theft of documents on the reelection campaign and the wiretapping of phones at the Watergate Complex. Multiple charges of obstruction of justice coupled with Nixon’s attempt to pay hush money to the burglars and impede the FBI’s investigation on the case. His impeachment turnout in the House brought doubt as to whether Nixon would be removed from office but after unedited tapes recording Nixon and his White House staffers were released, indicting him of covering up criminal activity, that doubt was dispelled. It was almost a certainty that Nixon was going to be forcefully removed from office. To spare himself the humiliation of being the first president to do so, Nixon resigned in a public and unforgettable speech on August 8, 1974. He would later be pardoned by U.S. President Gerald Ford.
So before you start celebrating or fighting, remember that impeachment is in no way or mean the end. It’s the beginning of a system put into place by the founders of the constitution, intentionally made to be difficult to be enforced. Justice may not always prevail, but it is our right as a country to put into judgment the leaders of our great nation.
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