The Impeachment Explainer

Hi there Teen Resisters! It's been a while, hasn't it? But we're back and better than ever with this feature on impeachment. There's a lot going on in the news right now but obviously, the announcement by Nancy Pelosi that there is officially an impeachment inquiry into President Trump has dominated the news cycle and been a source of excitement and confusion. So what is going on exactly? We've got you covered to help you understand it all.

What is impeachment?

Impeachment’s official definition is to charge a public official with a crime or misdemeanor. Our country more commonly knows it as the indicting of charges against a president. Recently, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has declared her inquiry into the impeachment of Donald Trump. However, it’s important to understand what that really means. Impeachment doesn’t remove the president from office, but rather states the charges that will be used in an attempt to further convict said president. This power traditionally lies within the House to start the process and investigate. The Senate is responsible for trying the official, according to Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Once impeachment is passed, meaning there are charges able to be pressed, a two-thirds vote allows the president to be convicted of these charges. If a two-thirds vote is not reached, the charges are dropped. If the official is convicted, he is only removed from the office. Any other consequence is inapplicable. 
    However, presidential impeachment followed with conviction has never happened and is very unlikely to. In fact, only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Both were never convicted by the Senate. Another famous case was Richard Nixon, but he resigned before he could be impeached. The Constitution states that “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” are what’s allowed to be the basis for impeachment. This list of criteria is one of the main reasons why impeachment is so difficult since there is no specification for what high crimes and misdemeanors refer to. Alexander Hamilton gave his opinion in Federalist 65, stating that even if an act isn’t necessarily prosecutable, as long as it’s disloyal to the country, there is a ground for impeachment. In this sense, impeachment is implied to be more of a remedy for the constituents rather than a punishment for the official.​

Graphic via Statista

What led to this inquiry?

On July 25th, President Trump made a seemingly routine call to President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Ukraine. A whistleblower from U.S. Intelligence filed a complaint that in this phone call, President Trump allegedly asked President Zelensky to look into some of Joe Biden’s son’s affairs. This was ostensibly done with the intention of removing Biden as a political competitor in the upcoming 2020 election. As stated in the actual whistle-blower complaint released on September 26th, (the transcript of the phone call was later also released following the complaint), the content of the call showed the “President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” Specifically, Trump urged Zelensky to further investigation into corruption in Joe Biden’s son’s business in Ukraine and into the cybersecurity group that first reported the Russian hacking of the 2016 election. This phone call occurred during a time when the US was withholding an aid package from Ukraine, meaning that Trump had immense power over the Ukrainian president. The whistleblower, whose name the Trump administration initially withheld from Congress, alleged that the administration had covered up the content of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, had actively taken steps to encourage Ukrainian interference in the election. 
In one example, the transcript of the call itself was placed on a separate server used for sensitive national security information. The whistle-blower comments: “One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.” 
​On September 24th, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi filed a formal impeachment inquiry. “This week the President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” she said in her address. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with a official impeachment inquiry.” Pelosi concluded the address with a powerful line: “No one is above the law."
For more specifics on context, check out this Politico article.

What Happens Now?

So with all this in the works, what’s really to come of this movement for impeachment? President Trump will very likely be impeached in the House of Representatives, seeing as it is controlled in large part by Democrats. By this point, even moderate Democrats in conservative districts -- NY 11’s Max Rose, for instance -- have come out in favor of impeachment.
However, seeing as the Republican party controls 53 seats in the Senate (not to mention to tie-breaking Vice-Presidential position) it's unlikely he'll be convicted in the Senate, especially considering the ⅔ supermajority impeachment requires. This is in large part because of the political pressure the GOP and its donors place on their Senators; should one step out of line and caucus with the Democrats, they can rest assured that their campaign funds will all but dry up and they’ll be branded a “traitor to Trump.” 
In fact, that fact may be all that’s holding the line -- according to Jeff Flake (R-AZ), 35 of his fellow Republican Senators would be voting to impeach Trump if their votes were private. This suggests that anti-Trump sentiments run deep throughout Washington; it’s the votes of his base (some 31% of voting Americans, polls estimate) they want, and it’s those votes the candidates lose when branded traitors. This being said, there have been multiple Republicans, including Flake, who have spoken out about this being a turning point. 
Despite Trump’s imminent impeachment in the House, it’s doubtful that a sizable portion of Trump’s base will change their affiliation. Having already seen racism, xenophobia, ableism, and sexism from him (not to mention a previous example of what he’ll be impeached for: election interference by colluding with a foreign power), it’s hard to imagine that many will be so outraged as to pick a different hill to die on. 
Regardless of what happens, the impeachment process will hang all of Trump's laundry out to dry, so to speak. And it's important that Pelosi and others are setting a precedent that, in Pelosi's words, "no one is above the law." It's about time that Trump is formally held accountable, and we're excited to see where this goes.
For more on this, see this very helpful flowchart from Buzzfeed News about the outcomes of this inquiry.

We hope that this was a little clarifying in this storm of news. There's lots more to come, and we can't wait to keep updating you. See you soon!
Peace & Power,
Teens Resist

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