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Impeachment Proceedings, the Media Drama that Follows, and a History Lesson I returned from a week’s out-of-country vacation where there was no news reports. No American political drama. No coverage of activities in Washington DC. It was refreshing. Yesterday morning after being home for less than a day, the morning talk shows and every major television station was ‘laser focused’ on the House of Representative’s Intelligence Committee’s move on the Articles of Impeachment. Looking at the news coverage this morning brought back my memories of the 1973 Nixon Impeachment and the 1998 Clinton Impeachment. Foremost, since my early education days through my college years and beyond, I am an American History student, always interested in understanding the policy and procedures in creating our laws and enacting the Articles in the US Constitution. I am intrigued on the nuisances of the constitutional process and how this Congress utilizes the impeachment procedures to arrive at a decision. Clearly, we know that all impeachment proceedings are tied to politics that are now played out on National TV for public review. This real drama is prime time TV watching. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent or no party preference, this is an American History lesson. We should watch with open interest as the hours, days and weeks ahead will be etched in our history books. Specifically, Impeachment comes from British constitutional history. The process evolved from the 14th century as a way for parliament to hold the king’s ministers accountable for their public actions. Impeachment, as Alexander Hamilton of New York explained in Federalist 65, varies from civil or criminal courts in that it strictly involves the “misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Individual state constitutions had provided for impeachment for “maladministration” or “corruption” before the U.S. Constitution was written. And the founders, fearing the potential for abuse of executive power, considered impeachment so important that they made it part of the Constitution even before they defined the contours of the presidency. Impeachment is not, to be clear, the removal of corrupt presidents or other officials, but simply the adoption of charges by the House, triggering a trial in the Senate. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, as the House passed articles of impeachment against them; though they were subsequently acquitted by the Senate, the term still applies. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to consummate an impeachment with removal from office, but the document is otherwise silent about procedures. The Nixon inquiry was an intensive, lengthy investigative effort that proceeded alongside the special prosecutor’s continuing grand jury investigation into the Watergate break-in and cover-up and a Senate select committee inquiry into the matter. The House Judiciary committee opened in October 1973, the House voted to back it in February 1974, and it lasted until July 1974. Major new revelations about the scandal kept breaking throughout that period, and eventually, the committee got to review secret information from the grand jury probe. The House moved deliberately toward a motion of articles of impeachment in 1974 after new evidence against the President continued to flow into the proceedings eventually leading to Nixon’s resignation. In 1868, the House approved 11 articles of impeachment against President Johnson, mostly revolving around his defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted the president’s power to dismiss Cabinet members (the underlying “offense” was clearly Johnson’s efforts to obstruct congressional Reconstruction of the former Confederate States). The Clinton inquiry, meanwhile, was essentially just a decision about whether to impeach the president based on the findings of independent counsel Ken Starr’s report (which alleged Clinton committed perjury and obstruction of justice to try to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky). That impeachment inquiry was officially opened in the Judiciary Committee after votes by the committee and then the whole House in October 1998. The committee held a few weeks of hearings and heard witness testimony (including from Starr), but it wasn’t really a new investigation, and it was over by mid-December. How Does the House Vote on Impeachment Itself? Under all precedents, the Judiciary Committee will debate and vote upon each proposed article of impeachment, and if any are approved (and of course there would be no committee vote unless success was assured), they are reported to the full House for debate and a conclusive vote for impeachment. Keep in mind that several House Committee have initiated investigations against President Trump. Typically, the party pushing impeachment will favor a tight set of resolutions that revolve around a clear pattern of malfeasance, and that might even attract members of the president’s party (or at least some of his supporters). That is exactly what took place this morning in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement that President Trump “may have committed” bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. And the impeachment proceedings began with allegations turned to collaborating witnesses’s testimony. In July of 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three of five proposed articles impeaching Nixon. The first to draw a vote, alleging presidential obstruction of justice, attracted six of the committee’s 17 Republicans. Though two other articles were subsequently reported, one was sufficient for impeachment and a Senate trial, so the committee vote led directly to Nixon’s resignation before the House could formally impeach him. In Clinton’s case, the Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment, with committee Democrats voting en bloc against all of them. Enough Republicans defected on the House floor to defeat two of these articles, and only five Democrats voted for the crucial article impeaching Clinton for lying under oath to a federal grand jury about his relationship to Lewinsky. If a President Is Impeached, Does the Senate Have to Hold a Trial? Most experts believe the provisions made for an impeachment trial in both the Constitution and in Senate rules mean some sort of proceedings are obligatory. With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being in charge, and even if you think he is required to hold a trial, who is going to enforce that requirement? The courts are likely to stay away from a conflict as a “political question.” The Constitution itself doesn’t say much about Senate impeachment trials of a president, other than requiring a two-thirds vote for removal from office, and stipulating that the Chief Justice of the United States will preside over the trial (presumably to remove the conflict of interest presented if the default presiding officer of the Senate, the vice president, oversaw a trial that could result in elevation to the presidency). So here we go through an intensive media impeachment process where talking heads from all parties will review every comment, every nuisance sentence to angle the process toward their political liking. As a high school history student in 1973 and a young college student taking my first ‘political affairs’ class in 1974, following the Nixon trial was a history lesson in real time for me. The broadcasts of the Senate Watergate hearings covered 51 days of “gavel-to-gavel” coverage. Each episode began with about five minutes of commentary from anchors Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, including an “hour by hour line-up” of what happened in that day’s hearings. The hearings ranged from two to seven hours in length, with breaks only for station identification during pauses in the hearings. https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/watergate The Clinton’s impeachment trial was more hurried: It began on January 7, 1999, when presiding officer Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in, and ended on February 12, with Clinton’s easy acquittal on both articles (45 senators, all Republicans, voted for his guilt on the perjury article, with ten Republicans defecting; and 50 senators vote for the obstruction article, with five Republicans defecting). https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached The difference today, unlike the 1973-74 and the 1998 impeachment proceedings, both Nixon and Clinton had just been re-elected President. Today, we watch with intrigue, the procedure, the witnesses’ testimonies, the cross cutting comments from Democrats and Republicans and the minute to minute media coverage of another American History lesson, all while the 2020 Presidential election cycle is just months away. All Americans have known since Trump’s election in 2016, that something was astray. The mangled conversations, the allegations of corruption and foreign government’s controlling the outcome of that election, the political movements on both sides of the political aisle with Democrats attesting that the President was guilty of something and the Republicans steadfastly denying every report. Now after the long winding road of the past three plus years has lead us to today. Whether you believe that the President has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanor and is subject to impeachment or this is a political exercise — this is another American history lesson. Don’t miss it.
Impeachment Proceedings, the Media Drama that Follows, and a History Lesson
I returned from a week’s out-of-country vacation where there was no news reports. No American political drama. No coverage of activities in Washington DC. It was refreshing.
Yesterday morning after being home for less than a day, the morning talk shows and every major television station was ‘laser focused’ on the House of Representative’s Intelligence Committee’s move on the Articles of Impeachment. Looking at the news coverage this morning brought back my memories of the 1973 Nixon Impeachment and the 1998 Clinton Impeachment.
Foremost, since my early education days through my college years and beyond, I am an American History student, always interested in understanding the policy and procedures in creating our laws and enacting the Articles in the US Constitution. I am intrigued on the nuisances of the constitutional process and how this Congress utilizes the impeachment procedures to arrive at a decision. Clearly, we know that all impeachment proceedings are tied to politics that are now played out on National TV for public review. This real drama is prime time TV watching. Whether you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent or no party preference, this is an American History lesson. We should watch with open interest as the hours, days and weeks ahead will be etched in our history books.
Specifically, Impeachment comes from British constitutional history. The process evolved from the 14th century as a way for parliament to hold the king’s ministers accountable for their public actions. Impeachment, as Alexander Hamilton of New York explained in Federalist 65, varies from civil or criminal courts in that it strictly involves the “misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” Individual state constitutions had provided for impeachment for “maladministration” or “corruption” before the U.S. Constitution was written. And the founders, fearing the potential for abuse of executive power, considered impeachment so important that they made it part of the Constitution even before they defined the contours of the presidency.
Impeachment is not, to be clear, the removal of corrupt presidents or other officials, but simply the adoption of charges by the House, triggering a trial in the Senate. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached, as the House passed articles of impeachment against them; though they were subsequently acquitted by the Senate, the term still applies. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to consummate an impeachment with removal from office, but the document is otherwise silent about procedures.
The Nixon inquiry was an intensive, lengthy investigative effort that proceeded alongside the special prosecutor’s continuing grand jury investigation into the Watergate break-in and cover-up and a Senate select committee inquiry into the matter. The House Judiciary committee opened in October 1973, the House voted to back it in February 1974, and it lasted until July 1974. Major new revelations about the scandal kept breaking throughout that period, and eventually, the committee got to review secret information from the grand jury probe. The House moved deliberately toward a motion of articles of impeachment in 1974 after new evidence against the President continued to flow into the proceedings eventually leading to Nixon’s resignation.
In 1868, the House approved 11 articles of impeachment against President Johnson, mostly revolving around his defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted the president’s power to dismiss Cabinet members (the underlying “offense” was clearly Johnson’s efforts to obstruct congressional Reconstruction of the former Confederate States).
The Clinton inquiry, meanwhile, was essentially just a decision about whether to impeach the president based on the findings of independent counsel Ken Starr’s report (which alleged Clinton committed perjury and obstruction of justice to try to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky). That impeachment inquiry was officially opened in the Judiciary Committee after votes by the committee and then the whole House in October 1998. The committee held a few weeks of hearings and heard witness testimony (including from Starr), but it wasn’t really a new investigation, and it was over by mid-December.
How Does the House Vote on Impeachment Itself?
Under all precedents, the Judiciary Committee will debate and vote upon each proposed article of impeachment, and if any are approved (and of course there would be no committee vote unless success was assured), they are reported to the full House for debate and a conclusive vote for impeachment. Keep in mind that several House Committee have initiated investigations against President Trump.
Typically, the party pushing impeachment will favor a tight set of resolutions that revolve around a clear pattern of malfeasance, and that might even attract members of the president’s party (or at least some of his supporters). That is exactly what took place this morning in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement that President Trump “may have committed” bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors. And the impeachment proceedings began with allegations turned to collaborating witnesses’s testimony.
In July of 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved three of five proposed articles impeaching Nixon. The first to draw a vote, alleging presidential obstruction of justice, attracted six of the committee’s 17 Republicans. Though two other articles were subsequently reported, one was sufficient for impeachment and a Senate trial, so the committee vote led directly to Nixon’s resignation before the House could formally impeach him.
In Clinton’s case, the Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment, with committee Democrats voting en bloc against all of them. Enough Republicans defected on the House floor to defeat two of these articles, and only five Democrats voted for the crucial article impeaching Clinton for lying under oath to a federal grand jury about his relationship to Lewinsky.
If a President Is Impeached, Does the Senate Have to Hold a Trial?
Most experts believe the provisions made for an impeachment trial in both the Constitution and in Senate rules mean some sort of proceedings are obligatory. With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell being in charge, and even if you think he is required to hold a trial, who is going to enforce that requirement? The courts are likely to stay away from a conflict as a “political question.”
The Constitution itself doesn’t say much about Senate impeachment trials of a president, other than requiring a two-thirds vote for removal from office, and stipulating that the Chief Justice of the United States will preside over the trial (presumably to remove the conflict of interest presented if the default presiding officer of the Senate, the vice president, oversaw a trial that could result in elevation to the presidency).
So here we go through an intensive media impeachment process where talking heads from all parties will review every comment, every nuisance sentence to angle the process toward their political liking.
As a high school history student in 1973 and a young college student taking my first ‘political affairs’ class in 1974, following the Nixon trial was a history lesson in real time for me. The broadcasts of the Senate Watergate hearings covered 51 days of “gavel-to-gavel” coverage. Each episode began with about five minutes of commentary from anchors Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, including an “hour by hour line-up” of what happened in that day’s hearings. The hearings ranged from two to seven hours in length, with breaks only for station identification during pauses in the hearings. https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/watergate
The Clinton’s impeachment trial was more hurried: It began on January 7, 1999, when presiding officer Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in, and ended on February 12, with Clinton’s easy acquittal on both articles (45 senators, all Republicans, voted for his guilt on the perjury article, with ten Republicans defecting; and 50 senators vote for the obstruction article, with five Republicans defecting). https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-clinton-impeached
The difference today, unlike the 1973-74 and the 1998 impeachment proceedings, both Nixon and Clinton had just been re-elected President. Today, we watch with intrigue, the procedure, the witnesses’ testimonies, the cross cutting comments from Democrats and Republicans and the minute to minute media coverage of another American History lesson, all while the 2020 Presidential election cycle is just months away.
All Americans have known since Trump’s election in 2016, that something was astray. The mangled conversations, the allegations of corruption and foreign government’s controlling the outcome of that election, the political movements on both sides of the political aisle with Democrats attesting that the President was guilty of something and the Republicans steadfastly denying every report. Now after the long winding road of the past three plus years has lead us to today. Whether you believe that the President has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanor and is subject to impeachment or this is a political exercise — this is another American history lesson. Don’t miss it.