Some GOP members have questioned the constitutionality of trying a former president. Indeed, that's the argument that Trump's lawyers made in their own brief ahead of the trial, calling the proceeding a "legal nullity" and leaving the door open to argue the very claims of election fraud that some say sparked the riot. The lawyers denied that Trump participated in insurrection. An impeachment proceeding is the formal process by which a sitting president of the United States is accused of wrongdoing.
It is a political process and not a criminal process. The articles of impeachment in this case there's just one are the list of charges drafted against the president. The vice president and all civil officers of the U. The process begins in the House of Representatives, where any member may make a suggestion to launch an impeachment proceeding.
It is really up to the speaker of the House in practice, to determine whether or not to proceed with an inquiry into the alleged wrongdoing, though any member can force a vote to impeach. Over House Democrats introduced the most recent article of impeachment on Jan. The impeachment article, which seeks to bar Trump from holding office again, also cited Trump's controversial call with the Georgia Republican secretary of state where he urged him to "find" enough votes for Trump to win the state and his efforts to "subvert and obstruct" certification of the vote.
And it cited the Constitution's 14th Amendment , noting that it "prohibits any person who has 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against' the United States" from holding office. The House managers, as the prosecution in the trial, present the first argument. During the course of the trial, evidence is presented and witnesses may be put to both direct examination and cross-examination.
The presiding officer may rule on any question of evidence presented but the officer can also refer that question to a vote of the Senate and any senator can request a vote on a particular question. Closing arguments will be presented by each side, with House managers opening and closing.
When the trial is concluded, the Senate meets in closed session to deliberate. Voting to convict on the articles of impeachment must be done in open session, and votes are tallied separately on each article. To convict on an article of impeachment, a two-thirds vote of senators present to vote is required.
If the respondent is convicted on one or more of the articles, the presiding officer will pronounce the judgment of conviction and removal.
The Senate may subsequently vote on whether the impeached official shall be disqualified from holding an office of public trust under the United States in the future. If the Senate considers such a motion, only a simple majority vote is required. Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution stipulates that the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States can be impeached and removed from office on three charges:.
The document reads, "treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. The phrase high crimes and misdemeanors is also not defined in the Constitution. During the Constitutional Convention, Virginia delegate George Mason suggested adding maladministration to the charges of bribery and treason as impeachable offenses. When concerns were raised as to the vagueness of the term, Mason substituted high crimes and misdemeanors instead.
As the Constitutional Rights Foundation notes, [2]. Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since , the English parliament had used 'high crimes and misdemeanors' as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping 'suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,' granting warrants without cause, and bribery.
Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve. In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton defined impeachable offenses as "those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.
Douglas of the U. Supreme Court. 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. Farrand, Max, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of Kyvig, David E. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, Les Benedict, Michael. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. New York: W. The Federalist Papers. New York: Penguin Books, Melton, Buckner F.
Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, Rehnquist, William H. New York: Harper Perennial, House of Representatives, 93rd Cong. Storing, Herbert J.
The Complete Anti-Federalist. Two presidents, Andrew Johnson and William Jefferson Clinton, have been impeached by the House, but neither was removed from office by the Senate. On Sept. And on Jan. This means that any House member may introduce articles of impeachment as they would a regular bill, or that the legislative body may vote to launch an impeachment inquiry, or an official investigation of the elected individual.
From this inquiry — typically carried out by the relevant subcommittees of the House — would emerge the charges, or articles of impeachment, for the House of Representatives to vote on. According to the House of Representatives, the "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" language came from Founding Father George Mason of Virginia, who drew it from a British legal term referring to crimes by public officials against the government.
This rather vague terminology has led to an ongoing debate over what misconduct qualifies as impeachable, according to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.
The term does not necessarily require the elected official to break a specific law, but rather to break public trust, Jeffrey A. This interpretation is backed up by Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper 65 , which referred to impeachable offenses as those "which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
The House can get the impeachment ball rolling in one of two ways. First, any member of the legislative body may introduce impeachment just as he or she would a regular bill. This process had been tentatively underway in the House before the announcement of a formal inquiry regarding Trump in September.
In that interview, Nadler said he and his committee would decide whether to introduce articles of impeachment onto the House floor by the end of , Politico reported. However, a whistleblower report in September alleged that Trump asked the president of Ukraine during a phone call in July to look for damaging information on Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden who once sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, according to the Associated Press.
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