How to impeach a US president

The Speaker of the US the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has signed the articles of impeachment passed by the US House of Representatives. In the articles, signed yesterday, the House has found President Donald Trump guilty of abusing his presidential power. With much fanfare and ceremony, seven Democrats have now been formally appointed to manage the prosecution of the president before a trial to be held in the Senate.

Trump stands accused by the House of using the powers of his office to damage a political rival – potential Democrat challenger Joe Biden. They charge that the President’s actions threatened US national security and that he subsequently obstructed Congress by refusing to cooperate with an inquiry into his activities.

The ink is now dry upon the articles of impeachment. The process is underway. The trial will begin on the 21 January 2020. Buckle in and get ready for the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump – it should be one hell of a ride.

But how will the process play out, and what is the likely result?

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States created at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 outlines the cause for the impeachment of the president of the Republic. It states that “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 Misdemeanours.”

So far, so simple – and yet, as with so much of the venerated founding document of the US Republic, the provisions are creatively ambiguous. They allow for the interpretation of the grave charges of “Bribery”, “High Crimes”, and “Misdemeanours” to be interpreted in a manner which is generous or gratuitously vindictive. Alas, it has often been the case in the history of the Republic that, whatever the best intentions of the Founding Fathers, the constitution has become a tool of partisan politics.

Then there is the process itself, which is divided up amongst the various branches of government.  For, while a simple majority in the House is enough to initiate the impeachment proceedings, the next stage of the process requires two thirds of the Senate to pass a guilty judgment upon the president and remove him from office. It has been fairly easy to pass stage one in the House, where the Democrats currently have a majority of fourteen seats; the attempted impeachment is likely to founder at the second hurdle in a Senate in which the Republicans hold 53 out of the 100 votes.

For constitutional anoraks, the real spectacle here is the fact that the impeachment process is one of the few exceptions to the US’s separation of powers – the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be presiding over the trial. The other famous exception, of course, is that the Vice President is also the regular presiding officer of the Senate.

There have only been two other impeachment trials brought against a president in US history – the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1868, and that of William Jefferson Clinton in 1998. Richard Nixon resigned rather than face an almost certain dismissal after the Watergate scandal. Both Clinton and Johnson were acquitted, although Johnson survived his trial by a single vote in the Senate – not quite a ringing endorsement of his presidency.

Johnson was a “Union Democrat” from Tennessee, a Veep who became president by default after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. He was impeached by a riled, Republican-dominated congress enraged by his management of the so-called “Reconstruction” in the South following the Civil War. In the end he was only saved by a group of “Republican recusants” in the Senate who feared that unseating the President would do more damage than good to the constitution. Better to cripple him in Congress and let his term expire.

Clinton’s trial was a different affair, though no less partisan. He was put in the dock in a notorious perjury trial after it turned out he had lied to Congress and the American people about having an extra-marital affair with one Monica Lewinsky, who was then working as a White House intern. In reality, this scandal merely provided the occasion for the Republicans under Newt Gingrich – they had been looking for an excuse to take down Clinton since he was first elected in 1993.

Slick Willy – an unfortunate nickname, it turned out – ended up sailing through the Senate trial, and left office two years later in 2000 with high approval ratings among the US public. The trial has not prevented Clinton from enjoying a later apotheosis as a kind of elder statesman and grandpa in the Democratic Party.

When it comes down to it, impeaching a President is easy to begin but difficult to complete. The same political partisanship which makes an impeachment trial will also likely be the force which breaks it, and the rage of party which is currently tearing through the US’s political landscape and institutions of government ought to see Trump safely acquitted in the Senate.

That said – there is always a first time for everything, and ever an opportunity for history to be made.  If, in the course of the trial, enough Republicans decide that it is no longer in their interests to support the President, there could yet be an upset which bucks the historical trend.