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Featured Resources for National History Day House of Representatives About this object In , presidential impeachment was closely followed by the press, the public, and the House itself.
Office of the Historian: history mail. The key lesson from this episode is that it was done by the First Congress after Blount left office, and the usual rule in constitutional law is that we defer to the First Congress because most of its members helped to draft or ratify the Constitution. The First Congress also bifurcated voting in the impeachment trial, requiring senators first to vote on whether to convict and then, secondly, voting on the sanction to be imposed.
When the Senate does hold a second trial of Trump, it will be following what the First Congress once did. In , West Humphreys left his federal judgeship to join the confederacy as a judge. A year later, the House impeached him, and the Senate convicted, removed, and disqualified him from holding any federal office again.
If one merely looks at presidential impeachments as a guide in answering the question whether Trump may be tried after leaving office, this precedent will be among those overlooked. Belknap was corrupt, and in the House had begun to consider his impeachment for bribery.
Belknap was desperate to stop the impeachment, so he rushed over to the White House and pleaded with the president to accept his letter of resignation before the House formally impeached him.
He hoped his resignation would block the House, but it did not: The House proceeded to impeach him. True, the Congress did not proceed with an impeachment or trial for Richard Nixon once he resigned from office. But that was not because of a constitutional limitation. It was because congressional leaders believed they could still impeach Nixon but declined because they agreed with President Gerald Ford that, after two years of investigating Nixon, it was time to put the entire Nixon matter behind us.
What is the lesson of these precedents? That the Senate will hold a trial of any impeached officials, regardless of whether they are still in office, and it is during this phase that impeached officials may raise affirmative defenses, such as arguing that the Senate lacks the power to impeach them because they are no longer in office.
The Senate is charged with deciding whether it may convict someone and impose through separate votes the sanctions available in impeachment trials, and its decision is final.
The Senate can also take additional testimony in an open Senate. The Senate may also order that the entire trial be before the full Senate. At the beginning of the trial, House managers and respondent's counsel present opening arguments regarding the impeachment charges. 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. In Buckley v. Valeo , the court defined an officer as "any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.
Therefore, as Cole and Garvey note, [1]. Any official exercising 'significant authority' including both principal and inferior officers, would therefore qualify as a 'civil Officer' subject to impeachment.
This view would permit Congress to impeach and remove any executive branch 'officer,' including many deputy political appointees and certain administrative judges.
William Blount of Tennessee was the first individual ever impeached by the United States House of Representatives and, to this day, is the only member of Congress ever to have been impeached.
The House impeached Blount on July 7, , for allegedly conspiring to incite Native Americans and frontiersmen to attack the Spanish lands of Florida and Louisiana in order to give them to England. After the impeachment vote in the House, but before Blount's impeachment trial in the Senate, the Senate voted to expel Blount under provisions of Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution.
Due to a lack of jurisdiction in Tennessee , where Blount fled after his conviction, the Senate could not extradite Blount for his impeachment trial.
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