Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Sunday predicted that Democrats will impeach Trump for a third time between his two presidencies if they take control of the House after the November midterm elections.
Jordan suggested in an interview on “Cats Roundtable,” the WABC 770 AM radio show hosted by John Catsimatidis, that Democrats will take the legislative branch’s oversight capability “and turn it into a weaponization of government.”
“They say they’re not going to, but we know they will –– they’ll do a third impeachment of President Trump,” Jordan told the host. “But that’s just part of it. They’re going to investigate the first family, they’re going to investigate cabinet secretaries.”
Literally everyone I knew thought impeachments automatically kicked you out of office until his first one, and it’s insane that they don’t do that.
Impeachment is analogous to Indictment in criminal law
Basically everything requires agreement between the house and the senate. The house impeaches, and the senate convicts, thereby agreeing with the house. If they disagree, it stops there just like any other legislation.
I feel like the big official sounding word of “impeachment” should be reserved for after the Senate convicts. Otherwise it’s just a meaningless gesture on behalf of the House.
I began searching to see how Bill Clinton was removed, then I realized the Senate acquitted him and his term naturally ended later that month. Andrew Johnson also wasn’t convicted.
This mechanism of removing the president from office has literally never worked before! The whole impeachment process is an overhyped nothing burger!
Edit: I should add that all three presidents had the majority of Senate vote to convict at least one of the impeachment charges, but they needed a 2/3rds supermajority because why not?
Clinton’s impeachment is why not. People forget that the blow job he lied about getting that he was impeached for wasn’t what he was being investigated for. The investigation was for a supposed shady land deal that turned out to be completely above board. They just kept desperately searching for anything they could because they knew they couldn’t win the next election.
The 2/3rds rule makes it hard to convict so that type of purely political move isn’t a normal function of congress.