No President has ever been impeached and removed from office in the history of the United States. To be removed from office requires a 2/3s vote of the Senate, a hurdle wisely set high by the Founding Fathers hopefully ensuring it would be used with discretion.
“They’re coming for me, aren’t they?”
The history of impeachment demonstrates a serious fault — it has always been political.
1. The first impeachment and Senate trial ever initiated was in 1868 and attempted to settle Civil War scores with President Andrew Johnson (the slain Lincoln’s vice president and successor) who pardoned the Confederates and was accused of such “high crimes and misdemeanors” as speechmaking “with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues.”
Johnson survived by a single vote: 35-19 and though a Democrat, there were nine Republican stalwarts who voted against his removal from office as it was such a serious danger to the Constitution.
2. President Bill Clinton engaged in an illicit and scurrilous sexual affair with a barely legal intern (it began during the government shutdown) who provided him with release from the tension of his office with oral gratification.
Should Hillary have been impeached instead for dereliction of marital duties?
He was impeached and tried, and, again, the Senate failed to remove him from office.
3. Donald Trump was impeached and tried in the Senate twice and both times the Senate failed to garner sufficient votes to remove him from office.
The Nancy Pelosi House of Representatives began its earnest impeachment effort on Inauguration Day and grossly politicized its theatrical efforts with much flair including a March to the Senate to deliver the charges and expensive memento signing pens for all. Cheesy, but Nan was nothing if not cheesy.
The second impeachment trial was held on 9 February 2020 — after Trump was no longer President and could not be removed from the office then held by Joe Biden.
The true intent of the second impeachment, rather than the impossible removal from office, was inarguably the objective of preventing Trump from ever seeking re-election, one of the penalties for being “removed” from office.
4. As a footnote to history, the Senate was poised to try Richard Nixon, but he resigned before the trial and thus it was cancelled.
The above is the entire history of presidential impeachment and trials since the founding of the Republic.
In every instance every trial was politically motivated though one may argue there was a serious character issue with Clinton, but he remained popular, though ineffective, through the end of his second term.
Comes now the House Republicans with the scent of retribution in their noses and the desire to return the favor by impeaching Joe Biden.
At the time of Nancy Pelosi’s contrived impeachments of Donald Trump, wise heads warned that if one used impeachment as a political tool to settle scores, then it would only breed more such political score settling.
That premonition has now come true.
I do not believe Joe Biden is a good President and I do believe he lied about the Hunter Biden laptop during the last two debates, but, thus far, there is nothing known to the public that rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” though there are two fertile areas: gross dereliction of duty as it relates to securing the southern United States border and personal corruption.
My advice is this — get the evidence first, do not fall into the trap of conducting fishing expeditions which has a Stalinist feel to it.
Now, having said all of that, I do believe that the Biden admin’s conduct pertinent to the southern border rises to the level of an impeachable offense, but that’s just me.
Don’t conduct political witch hunts when you know there is no chance of winning the vote in the Senate.
Garner sufficient evidence before you start throwing around the word IMPEACHMENT!
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car.
I do believe that Joe Biden told some staggering lies about the Hunter Biden laptop, that the 51 Intel Community partisans lied their asses off about the nature of the Hunter Biden laptop, and that this would have had a meaningful impact on the election, but this happened before Joe Biden as in office.
