How Many Democratic Presidents Impeached Againes
Only three U.Due south. presidents take been formally impeached past Congress—Andrew Johnson, Neb Clinton and Donald Trump. One of those presidents, Donald Trump, was impeached twice during his single term. No U.S. president has ever been removed from role through impeachment.
In addition to Johnson, Clinton and Trump, only one other U.Due south. president has faced formal impeachment inquiries in the House of Representatives: Richard Nixon. Many other presidents have been threatened with impeachment past political foes without gaining any existent traction in Congress.
The framers of the Constitution intentionally made it difficult for Congress to remove a sitting president. The impeachment process starts in the Business firm of Representatives with a formal impeachment enquiry. If the House Judiciary Committee finds sufficient grounds, its members write and pass articles of impeachment, which then go to the total House for a vote.
A simple bulk in the Firm is all that'due south needed to formally impeach a president. Just that doesn't mean he or she is out of a job. The final phase is the Senate impeachment trial. Only if two-thirds of the Senate find the president guilty of the crimes laid out in the articles of impeachment is the POTUS removed from office.
Although Congress has impeached and removed eight federal officials—all federal judges—no president has ever been found guilty during a Senate impeachment trial. Andrew Johnson came awfully close, though; he barely escaped a guilty verdict past one vote.
If Convicted, Removal From Office, Possible Disqualification from Government Service
If a president is acquitted past the Senate, the impeachment trial is over. Merely if he or she is found guilty, the Senate trial moves to the sentencing or "punishment" phase. The Constitution allows for two types of punishments for a president found guilty of an impeachable offense: "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall non extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and savor any Office of honour, Trust or Profit nether the United states of america."
The get-go punishment, removal from office, is automatically enforced following a two-thirds guilty vote. But the 2d punishment, disqualification from holding whatever future government position, requires a separate Senate vote. In this case, simply a unproblematic bulk is required to ban the impeached president from any future regime role for life. That second vote has never been held since no president has been found guilty in the Senate trial.
READ MORE: What Happens After a President Is Impeached?
Andrew Johnson: Impeached in 1868
The 1868 impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.
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Johnson was elected as Abraham Lincoln's vice president in 1864. The toughest determination facing Lincoln's 2d term was how to reestablish ties with the Confederate states now that the Civil War was over. Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction favored leniency while then-called "Radical Republicans" in his political party wanted to punish Southern politicians and extend full civil rights to freed slaves.
Lincoln was assassinated only 42 days into his second term, leaving Johnson in charge of Reconstruction. He immediately clashed with the Radical Republicans in Congress, calling for pardons for Amalgamated leaders and vetoing political rights for freedmen. In 1867, Congress retaliated past passing the Tenure of Role Act, which barred the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval.
Believing the constabulary to be unconstitutional, Johnson went ahead and fired his Secretary of War, an ally of the Radical Republicans in Congress. Johnson's political enemies responded by drafting and passing eleven articles of impeachment in the Firm.
"Sir, the bloody and untilled fields of the ten unreconstructed States, the unsheeted ghosts of the 2 thousand murdered negroes in Texas, cry [...] for the punishment of Andrew Johnson," wrote the abolitionist Republican Representative William D. Kelley from Pennsylvania.
Johnson was impeached in the House of Representatives by 126 votes to 47, merely narrowly avoided a two-thirds guilty verdict in the Senate by a single vote. Later his acquittal, he served out the rest of his term and became the outset (and only) former U.S. president to be elected to the Senate.
READ MORE: 150 Years Agone, a President Could Be Impeached for Firing a Cabinet Member
Bill Clinton: Impeached in 1998
President Clinton walking to the podium to deliver a short statement on the impeachment inquiry, apologizing to the country for his conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair and that he would accept a congressional censure or rebuke.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Clinton was plagued by legal troubles and scandals from the moment he entered the White House. In 1993, Clinton and his Commencement Lady, Hillary, were the discipline of a Justice Department investigation into the then-called Whitewater controversy, a botched business deal from their days in Arkansas. And in 1994, Clinton was sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones, who claimed Clinton exposed himself to her in a hotel room in 1991.
Interestingly, it was a combination of both legal cases that would ultimately lead to Clinton's impeachment. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr was appointed by the Justice Department to investigate the Whitewater thing, just he couldn't notice any impeachable prove. Meanwhile, lawyers for Jones got a tip that Clinton had an affair with a 21-year-sometime White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, a claim that both Lewinsky and Clinton denied under oath.
Starr switched the focus of his investigation when he received 20 hours of taped phone conversations between Lewinsky and Linda Tripp, a former White House colleague, in which Lewinsky alludes to the affair. Starr then got the FBI to fit Tripp with a wire to come across with Lewinsky at a Ritz-Carlton hotel exterior Washington, DC, when Lewinsky over again admitted to a sexual relationship with the president.
When the story went public, Clinton was forced to address the accusations on national telly.
"I want y'all to heed to me," Clinton famously said. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, non a single time, never."
Starr's investigative team ended up producing a long and lurid report detailing Clinton'south sexual dalliances with Lewinsky and providing evidence that Clinton lied under adjuration (perjury) in an attempt to obstruct the Starr investigation.
On Dec 19, 1998, the Business firm of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton on 2 divide counts: perjury and obstruction of justice. But in the ensuing five-calendar week Senate trial, Clinton was acquitted on both counts.
Despite a very public and embarrassing scandal, and being simply the second president in history to be impeached, Clinton's task approval rating peaked at 73 percent in 1999.
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READ MORE: Why Clinton Survived Impeachment While Nixon Resigned After Watergate
Donald Trump: Impeached in 2019 and 2021
On October nine, 2019 in Washington, D.C., President Trump answers questions on a pending impeachment inquiry.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
On September 24, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump regarding his alleged efforts to pressure the President of Ukraine to investigate possible wrongdoings by his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
The decision to authorize the impeachment inquiry came later a leaked whistleblower complaint detailed a July phone conversation between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump allegedly tied Ukrainian military aid to personal political favors. The White Firm later on released a reconstructed transcript of the phone phone call, which many Democrats argued demonstrated that Trump had violated the Constitution.
On December 18, 2019, President Trump became the third U.S. president in history to be impeached as the House of Representatives voted nearly forth party lines to impeach him over abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. No Republicans voted in favor of either article of impeachment, while 3 Democrats voted confronting 1 or both. On February 5, 2020, the Senate voted largely along political party lines to acquit Trump on both charges.
On January 11, 2021, Business firm Democrats introduced a 2nd article of impeachment that accused the president of "incitement of insurrection." The article cited telephone calls, speeches and tweets past President Trump that allegedly incited a violent oversupply that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump once more on Jan thirteen, 2021, making him the only president in history to be impeached twice. Unlike Trump'due south first impeachment, x Republicans joined Business firm Democrats who unanimously voted in favor of impeachment. Ane hundred and 90-vii Republicans voted against the 2d impeachment. The Senate trial took place after President Trump left office. He was found not guilty, though seven Republican senators joined Democrats in voting to convict, making it the near bi-partisan Senate impeachment vote in history.
Richard Nixon: Resigned in 1974
People read about President Nixon's resignation outside the gate of the White House in August, 1974.
Bettmann Annal/Getty Images
Despite being complicit in one of the greatest political scandals in U.S. presidential history, Richard Nixon was never impeached. He resigned before the House of Representatives had a take a chance to impeach him. If he hadn't quit, Nixon would likely accept been the first president ever impeached and removed from office, given the crimes he committed to comprehend upwards his involvement in the Watergate break-ins.
On July 27, 1974, subsequently vii months of deliberations, the Firm Judiciary Committee approved the first of five proposed articles of impeachment against Nixon, charging the president with obstruction of justice in an endeavour to shield himself from the ongoing Watergate investigation. Only a handful of Republicans in the judiciary committee voted to corroborate the articles of impeachment, and information technology was unclear at the fourth dimension if there would exist enough votes in the full Firm to formally impeach the president.
But everything inverse on August five, 1974, when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release unedited tapes of his Oval Part conversations with White House staffers during the Watergate investigation. The so-called "smoking gun" tapes included Nixon proposing the use of the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation, and paying hush coin to the convicted Watergate burglars. The transcript included the following:
NIXON: How much money practice you need?
JOHN W. DEAN: I would say these people are going to cost, uh, a one thousand thousand dollars over the next, uh, 2 years. (Break)
NIXON: We could get that.
One time the tapes were made public, Nixon got word from Republican congressional leadership that all but 15 Senators would probable vote against him in an impeachment trial, more than plenty to remove him from office. To save himself the indignity of becoming the beginning sitting president fired by Congress, Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974.
Nixon was pardoned of criminal charges by Gerald Ford, but many of his Watergate conspirators weren't then lucky. Virtually of his White House legal counsel, including John Dean, went to jail for their involvement in Watergate.
READ MORE: The Watergate Scandal
Other Presidents Threatened with Impeachment
A significant number of U.South. presidents have faced calls for impeachment, including v of the past half-dozen Republican presidents. But few of those accusations were taken seriously by Congress.
At that place were fifty-fifty rumblings about impeaching the nation's starting time president, George Washington, by those who opposed his policies. Those calls, however, did non attain the point of condign formal resolutions or charges.
John Tyler was the first president to face impeachment charges. Nicknamed "His Accidency" for assuming the presidency later William Henry Harrison died later just 30 days in office, Tyler was wildly unpopular with his own Whig political party. A House representative from Virginia submitted a petition for Tyler'due south impeachment, only it was never taken up by the Firm for a vote.
Between 1932 and 1933, a congressman introduced ii impeachment resolutions confronting Herbert Hoover. Both were eventually tabled by large margins.
More recently, both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush-league were the subject of impeachment resolutions submitted by Henry B. Gonzales, a Democratic representative from Texas, but none of the resolutions were taken upwards for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
George W. Bush faced a slightly more serious impeachment threat when Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced a House resolution charging Bush with a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors, including war crimes. The Business firm voted 251 to 166 to refer the resolution to the House Judiciary Commission, only House Speaker Pelosi said any talk of impeachment was "off the table."
Barack Obama was also accused of "high crimes and misdemeanors" befitting impeachment. In 2012, Republican Representative Walter Jones submitted a House resolution charging the president with authorizing armed forces activeness in Great socialist people's libyan arab jamahiriya without the consent of Congress. The resolution was referred to the Judiciary Committee where it was never brought upwardly for a vote.
Sentinel: The Presidents Drove on HISTORY Vault
Source: https://www.history.com/news/how-many-presidents-impeached
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