On September 24th, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry of President Trump.
The process of trying to impeach the president has been in the works since 2017 when Al Green, representative for Texas’s 9th congressional, became the first to publicly call for Trump’s impeachment.
At the time, he was alone in this decision. However, since then, more than 160 House Democrats have publicly stated they support an impeachment inquiry.
What does this mean? It means we’re only in the beginning process of the president possibly being impeached.
Before the House can vote on impeachment, the Speaker has to decide if their going to assign the special committee that has to be formed or the House Judiciary Committee.
According to ABC7 News, “If the speaker assigns the House Judiciary Committee to investigate… A simple majority of the members of the committee would have to vote in favor of approving an article or articles of impeachment in order to proceed to a vote by the full House.”
The House, which is mostly Democratic, the president has in fact committed an act of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then he will be impeached.
Unfortunately, depending on your position, this doesn’t mean he will face any real punishment. It doesn’t even mean he will have to leave office. In fact, after the House votes the next step begins.
The Senate, which is mostly Republican, has the final say in whether or not the president is convicted. If he is convicted, then he will have to leave office and would be his greatest punishment for any crimes committed. Of course, he can later be charged and face criminal punishment. According to the constitution, “the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”
But come on, he’ll never see the inside of a prison cell for any alleged crimes committed.
Let’s quickly take a trip down memory lane. According to USA Today, “Only 20 government officers in all, including Johnson and Clinton, have been impeached, and only eight of them, all federal judges with lifetime tenure, have been convicted and removed from office”
There has never been a president convicted of any crimes committed while in office and there won’t be.
As of Friday October 4th 2019, the three chairmen holding positions in the House overseeing the process; Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel and Elijah Cummings have subpoenaed the White House.
The White House was asked about the documents when the inquiry first came into play, but they refused to offer any documents. Also, Pelosi has been receiving backlash because she hasn’t held a full vote in the House approving of the impeachment inquiry.
According to CNN, Pelosi says “is no requirement under the Constitution, under House Rules, or House precedent that the whole House vote before proceeding with an impeachment inquiry.”
All of this has been rather unstimulating. It’s important, but history always seems to repeat itself and those in power tend to control the narrative.