How Do You Even Impeach A President?

Residence Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to officially file formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump on September 24, 2019, the Washington Post reports.


The potential for impeachment followed Donald Trump like a ghost since almost soon after he was officially sworn in as President on January 20, 2017. Nevertheless right after a whistle-blower filed a complaint about a potential act of treason at the President’s hands, those whispers and rumors turned into booming calls for impeachment from well over 170 Representatives and, after a closed-door meeting between Democratic party leaders, real action.


The complaint hails back to a July 25 phone call, in which Trump allegedly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden in an apparent try to beat his rival and win re-election. We don’t know a lot about the call, although it looks like we'll soon: that whistleblower wants to testify, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the Residence Intelligence Committee, tweeted.


And in a spectacular move, Trump just… confirmed the call. He told reporters and Twitter at large that he did, indeed, converse with Zelensky about Biden and his son Hunter’s company dealings in Ukraine. Nevertheless he also claimed that he didn’t pressure Zelensky into investigating the Bidens. (There’s currently no evidence that either Joe or Hunter Biden did anything unlawful in their Ukraine dealings, however Trump is accusing him of using his position as a former Vice President to help a Ukranian energy firm that was paying Hunter Biden.)


It’s unclear if the leaders came to any categorize kind of agreement, however Trump did ask his team to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine just days before his conversation with Zelensky, according to the New York Times. Since Biden is now leading the presidential primary race for the Democratic nomination, he’s one of Trump’s biggest political rivals and a understandable threat to a gentleman who basically views any opposition as a potential challenge to his bluster and bravado. If Trump indeed asked Zelensky to dig up dirt on his opponent, and then seemingly tried to withhold  American foreign aid group in attempt to threaten the Ukranian President, that could be an impeachable offense. (According to the Constitution, an impeachable offense includes “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”)


While this is the opening time a formal impeachment inquiry has been filed against the President, it isn’t the initial time the idea has been floated throughout Trump’s presidency: the initial took over nearly two years of Trump’s presidency once Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller’s report didn’t exonerate the President of any wrongdoing, nevertheless it wasn’t quite as explosive as several politicians and pundits had anticipated. Mueller abandoned his findings in Congress’s hands to prepare the next move, saying “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” although that 400-page report did not result in any real action by Congress to remove the president from his post. Sure, some Congresspeople called for removing him from office— but at the time Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the residence, was adamant that she’s just “not for impeachment.”


this might would be different though: The phone call to the Ukraine sheds light on the president’s dealings with Zelensky in what would be thought direct election interference. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp points out, impeaching Trump over the Mueller investigation would have been punishing him for past offenses, while impeaching him over the Ukraine call could be stopping him from “what sure looks like an ongoing try to hijack American foreign policy in service of the president’s reelection.”


So Democratic leaders are calling for impeachment. They’re demanding that the Trump administration turns over all documents related to the call, including a transcript Trump promises to hand over. They say that pressuring a foreign government for dirt on a political rival is an impeachable offense — whether or not he withheld American aid to sway Zelensky. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet with leaders of the six Residence committees investigating Trump on Tuesday (September 24) to discuss impeachment.


This begs the question: How do you even impeach a president?


categorize in attempt to impeach President Trump, or any president for that matter, an eas majority of the Residence of Representatives would have to vote in favor of impeachment. This might would be pretty likely in the current Residence in which Democrats hold 235 of the 435 seats, building a majority on their own. That would trigger an impeachment inquiry by the Residence Judiciary Committee, where Democrats also outnumber Republicans 24 to 17. Then, the committee investigates.


If they find that the President has committed impeachable offenses, they draw up a formal written charge, referred to as an article of impeachment, and send that to the entire Home to vote once more. If the Residence again casts a majority vote, the proceedings would head to the Senate, where things get even more hard to achieve impeachment. Republican Senators outnumber their Democratic colleagues 53 to 45 (there are two independent Senators), and two-thirds of the Senate would need to vote in favor of convicting the president — something unlikely to happen under Senate Leader Mitch McConnell’s watch.


And that intentionally high bar of conviction is what is likely stopping Democrats from going forward with the impeachment process. If they fail, it may hurt their chances of winning the 2020 election for an assortment of reasons: voters might lose faith, it can turn Trump into a victim, and yes it might further divide the nation. Although that hasn’t stopped some Democrats, who voted in favor of impeachment proceedings on July 24, saying Trump sowed “seeds of discord” among Residents of the
U.S. While he sent a series of racist tweets about four congresswomen of color. That resolution was tabled.


Impeachment proceedings also need to be initiated for congresspeople, cabinet members, and federal judges (hi, Brett Kavanaugh). The Home has initiated some group kind of impeachment proceeding more than 60 times while in U.S. History, according to the U.S. Office of the Historian, including voting on impeachment for 15 federal judges, one cabinet secretary and Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. Despite popular belief, no presidents have actually technically been removed from office by impeachment. Johnson and Clinton narrowly escaped the 2/3rds vote in the Senate, and Nixon resigned before he may officially be kicked out of office.


This is a developing story. MTV News will update it as we know more.