Impeachment in the United States

Based on Wikipedia: Impeachment in the United States

The Power to Fire the Unfireable

Here's a peculiar feature of American democracy: the President of the United States cannot fire a Supreme Court justice. The President cannot remove a federal judge. The President cannot even dismiss a cabinet secretary who has been confirmed by the Senate without at least raising eyebrows. And yet, someone must be able to remove these people if they turn out to be corrupt, incompetent, or dangerous.

That someone is Congress.

Impeachment is the mechanism the Constitution provides for removing officials who can't otherwise be fired. It's not a criminal trial, though it often feels like one. It's not an election, though politics saturates every moment of it. It's something stranger and rarer: a way for the legislative branch to reach into the executive or judicial branches and extract someone the voters can't touch.

What Impeachment Actually Is

The word "impeachment" gets thrown around loosely, often as a synonym for removal from office. But that's not quite right. Impeachment is more like an indictment. When the House of Representatives impeaches someone, it's essentially saying: we believe this person has committed serious misconduct, and we're sending the case to trial.

The trial happens in the Senate.

Think of it this way: the House is the grand jury that decides whether there's enough evidence to bring charges. The Senate is the courtroom where the actual trial takes place. Only if the Senate convicts does the official get removed from office.

This two-step process was no accident. The Founders wanted impeachment to be serious but not easy. They'd seen how the British Parliament could weaponize impeachment for political vendettas, and they wanted safeguards. Requiring two different chambers to act—first the House to impeach, then the Senate to convict—meant that removing an official would require broad consensus, not just a momentary political majority.

The Numbers That Matter

To impeach someone, the House needs a simple majority. If 218 of the 435 representatives vote yes, the official is impeached.

To convict and remove, the Senate needs a two-thirds supermajority. With 100 senators, that means 67 guilty votes—assuming everyone shows up. If only 90 senators are present, you'd need 60.

This asymmetry is crucial. It's relatively easy to impeach but very hard to convict. In practice, this means impeachment often functions as a political statement rather than a removal mechanism. The House can say, loudly and for the historical record, "we believe this person committed high crimes." But actually getting rid of them requires convincing a supermajority of senators, including, usually, members of the official's own party.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: What Does That Even Mean?

The Constitution specifies that officials can be impeached for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Treason and bribery are straightforward enough. But what on earth are "high crimes and misdemeanors"?

The Constitution doesn't say.

This was intentional ambiguity. The phrase comes from British parliamentary practice, where it had been used for centuries to describe abuses of power by government officials. The key word isn't "crimes"—it's "high." These aren't ordinary offenses. They're violations of the public trust, abuses of the power that comes with high office.

Gerald Ford, while serving in the House of Representatives, once said that an impeachable offense is "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." This sounds cynical, but it's largely accurate. There's no court that can overrule the House's judgment about what constitutes grounds for impeachment. When the House says an act is impeachable, it is—at least for purposes of starting the process.

Historically, impeachable offenses have included things like perjury, abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and conduct unbecoming of the office. But they've also included things that weren't crimes at all in the ordinary sense. An official who uses their position for corrupt self-dealing might not have violated any statute, but they've certainly violated the public trust in a way the Founders meant to address.

Who Can Be Impeached?

The Constitution says "the President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States" can be impeached. That clearly includes the President and Vice President. It clearly includes federal judges, who serve lifetime appointments and can't be removed any other way.

But who else counts as a "civil officer"?

Cabinet secretaries definitely qualify—they're appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. So do other presidentially-appointed officials who run major agencies. The Secretary of Homeland Security, for instance, was impeached in 2024, the first cabinet member impeached in nearly 150 years.

Interestingly, members of Congress themselves are not considered civil officers for impeachment purposes. The Senate figured this out back in 1797, when it dismissed impeachment proceedings against Senator William Blount on the grounds that a senator isn't a "civil officer" under the Constitution. This makes practical sense: each chamber of Congress already has the power to expel its own members by a two-thirds vote. There's no need to involve the other chamber through impeachment.

At the other end of the spectrum, ordinary federal employees—your local postal worker or National Park ranger—can't be impeached. They don't exercise "significant authority" and weren't appointed by the President. They can simply be fired through normal employment procedures.

The Process: From Accusation to Verdict

An impeachment can start in several ways. A member of the House can introduce articles of impeachment. A House committee can investigate and recommend impeachment. Even outside parties—the Judicial Conference, a special prosecutor, or a citizen petition—can request that impeachment proceedings begin.

Typically, serious impeachment efforts begin with an inquiry. The House Judiciary Committee investigates, holds hearings, interviews witnesses, reviews documents. This is where the case gets built. The committee then votes on whether to recommend impeachment to the full House.

If the full House votes to impeach, the case moves to the Senate. The House appoints "managers"—essentially prosecutors who will present the case against the impeached official. These House managers function like district attorneys in a criminal trial, laying out the evidence and arguing for conviction.

The Senate trial looks somewhat like a courtroom proceeding. Senators take a special oath promising to do "impartial justice." Witnesses can be called. Cross-examination happens. The accused has the right to mount a defense with their own attorneys.

But there are crucial differences from a criminal trial. There's no judge in the traditional sense. When a president is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides. For anyone else, the Vice President normally presides (since the Vice President is president of the Senate), or the president pro tempore takes over.

There's no jury instruction about reasonable doubt. Senators vote their conscience, or their politics, or both. There's no appeal. When the Senate votes, that's it.

What Happens After Conviction

If two-thirds of the senators present vote guilty on at least one article of impeachment, the official is automatically removed from office. Immediately. No appeals, no transition period.

The Senate can also vote, by simple majority, to bar the convicted person from ever holding federal office again. This is a separate vote from conviction. It's possible to remove someone but leave open the possibility that they could run for office or be appointed to a position in the future.

Crucially, impeachment is what lawyers call "remedial, not punitive." It's about fixing a problem—getting a bad actor out of office—not about punishment. The convicted official doesn't go to prison because of impeachment. They just lose their job.

This means a person who's been impeached and removed can still face criminal charges for the same conduct. Double jeopardy doesn't apply because impeachment isn't a criminal prosecution. Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. If prosecutors had wanted to charge him criminally after he left office, they could have. They chose not to.

There's one more twist. The President has the power to pardon anyone convicted of federal crimes—except in cases of impeachment. This means a President can't pardon someone to prevent their removal from office, and a President can't pardon themselves out of an impeachment conviction. Whether a President can pardon themselves for the underlying criminal conduct is a separate question that's never been tested in court.

The Speed Bump Problem

Starting in the 1980s, the Senate developed a shortcut for impeachment trials. Rather than having all 100 senators sit through weeks of testimony, the Senate began using special committees to handle the evidentiary phase. These committees would hear witnesses, review evidence, and compile a record that all senators could then review before voting.

This made practical sense. The Senate has a lot of business to conduct. Having every senator spend weeks on an impeachment trial for, say, a corrupt federal judge in Louisiana was expensive and inefficient.

But it raised a constitutional question. The Constitution says the Senate shall "try" all impeachments. If only a committee hears the evidence, is the full Senate really conducting the trial?

Several impeached judges challenged this procedure. In 1993, the Supreme Court answered in Nixon v. United States. (This was Walter Nixon, a federal judge—not Richard Nixon, the president.) The Court said federal courts couldn't review impeachment procedures at all. How the Senate conducts a trial is a "political question" for the Senate to decide. The Constitution gives the Senate "the sole Power to try all Impeachments," and that means the Senate gets to determine what a trial looks like.

Can You Impeach Someone Who's Already Gone?

This question came to a head in 2021. The House impeached President Donald Trump on January 13th for his role in the January 6th Capitol riot. But Trump's term ended on January 20th. By the time the Senate trial began on February 9th, Trump was a private citizen.

Could you try a former president?

The Senate said yes, by a 55-45 vote. The argument for jurisdiction was straightforward: the House impeached Trump while he was still president. If officials could escape conviction simply by resigning or waiting out their term, impeachment would be toothless. The Constitution also allows the Senate to bar convicted officials from future office—a meaningless power if it couldn't apply to former officials.

There was historical precedent, too. In 1876, the House impeached Secretary of War William Belknap just hours after he resigned. The Senate voted it had jurisdiction to try him anyway, though it ultimately acquitted him.

Trump was acquitted in his second trial. But the jurisdictional question was settled, at least as a practical matter: yes, former officials can be tried for impeachments that occurred while they were in office.

The Only Person Impeached Twice

As of 2025, Donald Trump holds a unique distinction in American history: he's the only federal official to be impeached more than once. The Constitution doesn't limit how many times someone can be impeached, and Trump tested that boundary.

His first impeachment, in 2019, arose from allegations that he pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival. The House impeached him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted him on both counts.

His second impeachment, just over a year later, charged him with incitement of insurrection for his role in the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Again, the Senate acquitted—though seven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to convict, the most bipartisan impeachment vote in history.

Impeachment at Other Levels

The federal impeachment process gets most of the attention, but it's not the only game in town. Most states have their own impeachment procedures for state officials. State governors, state judges, and other state officers can be impeached and removed through processes that mirror the federal one.

Even tribal governments and some local governments have impeachment provisions. The basic idea—that officials who abuse their power should be removable by a deliberative process—extends throughout American government.

Why Impeachment Matters

Impeachment is rare. Only 21 federal officials have been impeached in American history. Just 8 have been convicted and removed—all of them judges. No president has ever been removed through impeachment. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were acquitted. Richard Nixon resigned before the House could vote.

But the rarity is part of the point. Impeachment exists as an emergency measure, a constitutional fire extinguisher. You hope you never need it. But you need to know it's there.

The threat of impeachment shapes behavior even when it's never used. Presidents think about whether their actions could trigger impeachment proceedings. Judges consider that their lifetime appointments aren't quite lifetime if they engage in corrupt conduct. The mere possibility of impeachment provides a check on power.

At the same time, impeachment's difficulty is a feature, not a bug. The Founders didn't want Congress removing presidents every time there was a policy disagreement. They wanted a tool for genuine emergencies—treason, bribery, fundamental betrayals of public trust. The supermajority requirement for conviction ensures that removal requires something close to consensus.

In an era of intense partisan division, that consensus has become nearly impossible to achieve. The two most recent presidential impeachment trials both ended in acquittal, with votes falling largely along party lines. Some see this as proof that impeachment is broken. Others see it as evidence that the process is working exactly as designed—preventing removal except in cases of overwhelming evidence and broad agreement.

Either way, impeachment remains what it has always been: an awkward, dramatic, and essential part of the constitutional structure. It's the answer to a question the Founders couldn't avoid: what do you do when the people who are supposed to serve the public decide to serve themselves instead?