What Everyone Should Know about Impeachment
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Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, goes into detail with what we should expect, according to the Constitution:
“The Constitution gives the “sole Power of Impeachment” to the House, which can approve articles of impeachment by a simple majority. As a practical matter, therefore, it might be said that the category of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” includes whatever the House says it does. But America’s founders took this phrase from English common law, where it had developed a definition. It is a narrow category of serious misconduct that requires removing the president now, rather than waiting for the next election.
Articles of impeachment approved by the House are similar to a criminal indictment by a grand jury: they are a list of unproven accusations. The House has adopted 19 of the more than 60 resolutions of impeachment introduced since our Founding. Fifteen of those have been for federal judges, including Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1804. The last resolution of impeachment approved by the House concerned former U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. in 2009. He was accused of receiving gifts, cash payments and other valuable items from lawyers practicing before him.
The Senate has the “Sole Power to try all Impeachments,” although the Constitution does not explicitly require the Senate to act on the articles of impeachment or to hold a trial. Under congressional rules, members of the House who are designated as impeachment “managers” have the role of prosecutors. The impeachment trial of a president is presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and held before the entire Senate. Impeachment trials of other officials (under rules established by the Senate) take place before an impeachment trial committee of senators. In these trials, Senators have a role that combines features of both judge and jury, with the authority to govern the conduct of the trial and decide any evidentiary issues that may arise.”
If the House votes to impeach, then the Senate will ultimately try the case against President Trump, and determine if he should be removed from office.
Read the full article at the National Interest here.
What do you think about Speaker Pelosi’s inquiry into the impeachment of President Trump?
