Mr. Beat: Every impeachment in American history

 

[VIDEO] Mr. Beat - hopefully your favorite ed-u-tuber - takes on this civic/political topic of impeachment. The relevant part of this process you can find in the US Constitution.

As you will see three presidents have been impeached and all have been acquitted. Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice and in the second case he was impeached just as he was leaving office due to his alleged role in inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection. And one driver of this was to make him ineligible for running again for president in 2024.

In addition to three presidents - Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. The other federal officials who were impeached were a US Senator, cabinet officials, a US Supreme Court Justice, and federal judges. Some were removed from their office and in some cases were ineligible to hold any federal office.

They noted that usually for impeachment hearings the House would hold investigative committees and then they would have a vote for impeachment. Then a trial in the Senate which would determine whether or not to convict the impeached party. Basically the House is the grand jury and the Senate is the jury.

Now also note that the process is meant to be political, perhaps a mechanism to remove someone who at the very least isn't operating within the bounds of the Constitution. What helps this process is whether or not there were actual criminal charges against the official. In most cases noted in this video there were criminal charges that lead to impeachment.

Impeachment over

[VIDEO] I'm sorry to have not followed this as consistently as I should've, however, the result of this wasn't exactly in doubt. No more than the confusion that occurred in Monday's Iowa Caucuses.

So this happened yesterday...

The Senate voted Wednesday to acquit President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending a historic Senate trial that was centered on his conduct toward Ukraine but that did not include live witnesses or new documents.

One Republican — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — crossed party lines to join Democrats in voting to convict Trump on the first charge, abuse of power.

Trump stonewalled the House impeachment probe, blocking witnesses and denying documents. He stands as the third president to be impeached.

The acquittal follows a State of the Union address Tuesday night in which Trump pointed to the strong economy as vindication as he sought to move on from impeachment. The speech ended with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tearing up a copy of Trump’s prepared remarks.

The crux of the case against Trump is the allegation that he withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.

It's no surprise that there are many in Washington, DC who doesn't like President Donald Trump. He's unlike anyone else who became President in recently memory. I'm glad the impeachment vote resulted in acquittal and we can get on with the business of this country.

With that said, I know many were unhappy with the results of an election that took place just about four years ago. Remember that this year in 2020, we're going through an election season that started in Iowa. By the summer we'll know who will be the Democrat nominee for President.

Still, we do have an election this year. I would encourage you to pick a candidate and if you got people in other states encourage them to vote for the candidate of your choice. If you don't like our current President, we have the opportunity to fix that later this year!