Here's How Donald Trump Could Actually Be Impeached
Chris
Riotta
NewsweekJune 7, 2017
- 12 minutes ago
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4 seconds agoricky l
Here's How Donald Trump Could Actually Be Impeached
Chris
Riotta
NewsweekJune 7, 2017
Here's How Donald Trump Could Actually Be Impeached
More
The most critical moment thus far in the federal probe into
Russia's meddling in the 2016 election will arrive Thursday, when former FBI
Director James Comey testifies in front of the Senate intelligence committee
just weeks after he was fired by President Donald Trump.
Democratic lawmakers have already gotten a head start on
drafting articles of impeachment, claiming the president obstructed justice by
firing the FBI director to ease the burden of the investigation on his new
White House administration. But constitutional law experts tell Newsweek the exhaustive political process to
remove the president could only begin when, and if, there’s enough evidence to
suggest Trump committed "treason, bribery, high crimes and
misdemeanors."
Comey's testimony will surely be pivotal in the
ongoing Russian saga enveloping the Oval Office, though it’s unclear whether
his statements will add fire to calls for the president's removal, or be viewed
within the same divisions currently enveloping Trump's America.
"The president stirs up a lot of emotions in
people," Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash, a James Monroe distinguished
professor of law at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Miller
Center, tellsNewsweek. "You're going to find a lot of people will
go into Comey's testimony who hate Trump, and are inclined to think he’s
already committed an impeachable offense, while others who love Trump will try
to find falsities left and right in what he says."
Impeachment, which allows Congress to remove presidents before
the close of their terms, begins when the House of Representatives votes on one
or more articles of impeachment and at least one of those receive a majority
vote. A chief justice of the Supreme Court then oversees a political trial in
the Senate, in which a two-thirds vote is needed to force the president’s
removal.
A president’s lawyers will spar with a coalition of House
lawmakers (called managers throughout the impeachment trials), and the process
can take years. If an impeachment is successful and a president is found
guilty, he or she will immediately be removed and replaced by the vice
president. Impeachments have only happened three times. Former Presidents
Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached but acquitted in 1868 and
1998-1999 respectively, while President Nixon resigned to avoid his 1974
impeachment.
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Trump reportedly told
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak
he fired Comey after facing “great pressure because of
Russia,” and noting, "I’m not under investigation."
Democratic Representative Al Green of Texas says that’s
enough to say the president in fact obstructed justice in an attempt to weaken
the federal investigation into his campaign and administration. Other lawmakers
have pointed to Trump’s various international business dealings and the Trump
Organization’s profiting off the presidency as other grounds for impeachment,
though the immediate focus has largely rested on the Russian investigation.
"This is about my position. This is about what I believe.
And this is where I stand. I will not be moved. The President must be
impeached," Green said May 17. "For those who do not know,
impeachment does not mean that the President would be found guilty. It simply
means that the House of Representatives will bring charges against the
President. It's similar to an indictment but not quite the same thing."
But grounds for impeachment lie in an
"opaque" and highly debatable gray area, experts say. The
removal process is entirely political, and does not equate to any criminal
charges or convictions.
Whether Comey provides a statement potentially capable of
swaying right-leaning voters and independents’ support for Trump depends on
what attitude the former FBI director brings to the table Thursday afternoon.
"The real question is which Comey shows up to testify: the
talkative insider dying to dish the inside scoop on Trump's bizarre and
increasingly unpredictable antics, or the tight-lipped G-man who keeps his own
counsel and answers every second question with a no-comment," Jens
David Ohlin, associate dean and law professor at Cornell Law School, tells Newsweek. "If it's the
former it will be an unparalleled D.C. summer blockbuster that will provoke an
epic Trump tweet-storm meltdown. But if it's the latter it will be an
anticlimactic box office flop."
While Nixon and his administration attempted to argue
impeachment cases needed to focus on a federal crime, Clinton’s opponents said
his lies to the American public were all that were needed for his removal
process to begin. Whereas the public and many Nixon voters eventually
denounced Nixon and demanded his immediate resignation or impeachment,
Clinton’s saga never fully amounted to the same level of criticism, allowing
him to remain in office, albeit further embattled than ever.
What makes impeachment such a debatable issue is that any
offense of an elected leader in the White House could eventually amount to what
some consider a "high crime." The term, adapted from English
law, traditionally provides parliament the power to hold anyone accountable for
committing severe crimes that aren’t necessarily felonies.
"Impeachment is partly a perception question,” Prakash
says. "Imagine Trump’s had several conversations with Vladimir Putin about
how to harm Hillary Clinton’s prospects. There will be plenty of people who
think it’s an impeachable offense, and others who would say it’s terrible, bad
judgement, but doesn’t rise to their level of what an impeachable offense
is."
Prakash says that such a high level of collusion with the
Russian leader "would be damaging whether or not it’s
impeachable," but that a GOP-controlled House may be less likely to
kick off the process to remove a Republican president if support for
impeachment from their constituents and independent voters wasn’t high enough.
As of now, polls show support for Trump's impeachment is
higher than his approval ratings.
More from Newsweek
SUPPORT FOR DONALD TRUMP'S IMPEACHMENT IS NOW HIGHER THAN HIS APPROVAL RATING
BY ON 6/5/17 AT 10:25 AM
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Virtually every
single poll tracking President Donald Trump's approval rating showed the figure
plummeting Monday morning, well below the margin of error compared to the
rising level of support for impeachment. The results
follow Trump's controversial decision to withdraw the United States
from the Paris climate accord; the ongoing investigation into his
campaign’s possible ties to the Kremlin is also a factor.
The president's
approval rating dipped from nearly 42 percent to just 36 percent over the
weekend, according to a Gallup daily tracking poll published Monday.
Trump's declining popularity is inching closer toward his all-time low of 35
percent as president in March, when Gallup had the president’s approval at
just 35 percent. What's more, nearly 43 percent of American voters support the
idea of beginning the official impeachment process for Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll published Wednesday.
There are slight
discrepancies between several leading polls as to where the president’s
approval officially stands, though each tracking poll published Monday and
over the weekend seemed to show a decline in popularity following Trump's
decision on the Paris Agreement. Even right-leaning poll sites like Rasmussen Reports are indicating dips in support for the
president's job performance, reporting that as of Monday, 54 percent of the
nation disapproves of Trump’s tenure as commander in chief.
Whereas Trump
enjoyed record-high popularity near the end of his first trip abroad since
assuming the Oval Office (nearing 42 percent or above in several polls and
indexes), now he is once again in the historic territory of being one of
the least popular new presidents in modern American history. The public’s
increasing support for the exhaustive political process of removing the
president from office comes at a time when Democratic lawmakers are taking to the
airwaves and the floors of Congress to call for Trump’s impeachment.
Texas Rep. Al
Green brought an official call to Congress to impeach the president
May 17 and said he was writing drafts of impeachment articles. Firebrand
California Rep. Maxine Waters was back on TV Sunday afternoon, demanding that
her colleagues take Trump’s impeachment—and the allegations against him
concerning his business interests and ties to Russia—seriously.
"We're also
going to continue to talk about how this president and his allies, I believe
and others believe, colluded with the Russians to undermine our
democracy," Waters told Joy Reid on MSNBC on Sunday. "And we’re
not going to stop talking about it, because this is extremely important to the
future of this country."
