How to impeach a president

What we can learn from Reconstruction, Watergate, and the Clinton saga.

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[2:31] CORRECTION: A previous version of this video misstated the year of Andrew Johnson's impeachment. He was impeached in 1868, not 1863.

The founding fathers included impeachment in the constitution so that Congress would have a way to remove leaders who had "rendered themselves obnoxious," in the words of Benjamin Franklin. But the way they set up the process, it's nearly impossible to remove a president from office without substantial support from the president's own party. That's what happened during Watergate: some congressional republicans protected Richard Nixon, but others demanded to know the extent of his involvement in a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and the subsequent cover-up. In the words of then-Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" It was pressure from Republican leaders like Barry Goldwater that made Nixon resign before the House could vote on articles of impeachment-- Goldwater convinced Nixon that too many Republicans were willing to vote to remove him from office, he'd never survive a Senate vote.

The opposite was true during the impeachment proceedings for Bill Clinton. After it became clear he lied during a deposition for a sexual assault suit brought by a former employee, Paula Jones, about his relationship with a different employee, Monica Lewinsky, Republicans in Congress argued the offense was serious enough to be impeachable. Democrats disagreed, and although the House voted to impeach Clinton on a party-line vote, not a single Democratic senator voted to remove him from office. If a President still has the support of a majority of his political party, history suggests the chances for impeaching and removing him from office are slim to none.

While legal scholars, activists, and some Democratic members of Congress have pushed for articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, it seems unlikely at this point that a substantial number of Republicans would break rank in the Senate to create a 2/3 majority in favor of removal from office.

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When America’s founding fathers were debating
how to set up a brand-new government,

they ran into a problem:
What should happen if a president, in Benjamin

Franklin’s words, has “rendered himself
obnoxious?”

Most countries didn’t have elected leaders.

Or ways to get rid of them, if necessary.

So Franklin and the framers turned to a provision
of British common law known as impeachment:

Trial, conviction, punishment.

In Great Britain, impeachment could be brought
against anybody, any citizen.

And it also could result in any punishment,
including death.

Michael Gerhardt is a constitutional law professor
who literally wrote the book in impeachment.

So they put impeachment in the constitution
and then set up a whole series of unique american

features in it.

The constitution lays out three offenses for
which any federal official, including the

President, can be impeached.

The first two, treason and bribery, are pretty
straightforward.

Treason means helping enemies of the United
States.

Bribery, taking money or gifts in exchange
for a political favor.

And the last phrase, other high crimes and
misdemeanors, is not defined in the constitution

But these were thought to be serious offenses
against the Republic, and serious breaches

of trust.

For three U.S. presidents, Andrew Johnson,
Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, the question

of whether to impeach and remove them from
office centered around whether their behavior

fit in this third category of high crimes
and misdemeanors.

The process of Impeachment has to start in
the House of Representatives.

Any member can introduce an impeachment resolution.

A resolution, that President George W. Bush
be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors

But plenty, like this one, go nowhere.

That’s because impeachment charges, have
to be approved by a majority of the House

Judiciary Committee.

Next, the full House of Representatives votes
on whether to impeach.

If a simple majority votes yes, the President
is officially impeached.

But that doesn’t mean they lose the presidency.

That decision happens in a Senate trial.

The Senators act as the jury.

They hear evidence from both sides
And if 67% of those Senators vote to to convict,

the President is removed from office.

This has never actually happened.

In 1863, a House majority voted to impeach
Andrew Johnson for firing is Secretary of

War.

This was after months of conflict after Reconstruction
following the civil war.

The only other president impeached by the
House was Bill Clinton in 1998.

But in both cases, not enough Senators voted
to actually remove them from office.

Johnson was only one vote short, but in Clinton’s
case, it wasn’t even close

The Respondent, William Jefferson Clinton,
is not guilty as charged in the Senate article

of impeachment.

That’s because votes in Clinton’s impeachment
in the House and trial in the Senate were

split almost completely by party.

part of the disagreement within the Senate
had to do with the context in which Clinton's

actions had taken place.

The whole thing started when Clinton was sued
for sexual harassment by a woman named Paula

Jones, who worked for him when he was Governor
of Arkansas.

In a deposition for that case, Jones’ lawyers
asked Clinton if he’d had a sexual relationship

with a different employee-- a White House
intern named Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton said he hadn’t.

I did not have sexual relations with that
woman.

Ms. Lewinsky.

But that wasn’t true.

I had intimate contact with her that was inappropriate.

The house will be in order.

Republicans in the house argued Clinton should
be impeached for lying under oath.

What the defenders want to do is lower the
standards by which we judge this president,

and lower the standards for our society by
doing so.

Democrats disagreed that the offense was serious
enough to be called a “high crime.”

At one point, they walked out of the chamber
in protest.

There is one small segment on the far-right,
who have lost all objectivity, and are determined

to impeach the President at all costs.

House Resolution 6, 11, resolved, that William
Jefferson Clinton, President of the United

States, is impeached, for high crimes and
misdemeanors.

But Clinton’s popularity didn’t really
suffer.

There was not a sense the American people
are demanding that he be tossed out of office.

Not a single Democratic Senator voted to remove
Clinton from office.

Typically, you need to have members of more
than one party

That’s one of the major differences between
Clinton’s case and President Richard Nixon’s.

Over the course of several months in 1973,
members of Congress, and the American people,

learned about Nixon’s possible involvement
in a break-in at the offices of the Democratic

National Committee.

By the time the charges had been shown to
have some evidence supporting them, the public

began to kind of render a judgement against
Nixon, which was, his popularity plummeted.

That evidence came out because Republicans,
members of Nixon’s own party, in both the

House and Senate, called for investigations
into the President’s behavior.

In the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans
joined with Democrats to approve Articles

of Impeachment against Nixon.

But Nixon resigned before the full house could
vote on impeachment because Republican leaders

had told him there was no way he’d survive.

Which explains why no president has ever been
removed from office by impeachment.

For that to happen, the president doesn’t
just have to commit some high crime or misdemeanor.

He has to lose his own party.

In which case, history suggests he’ll see
himself out.