today we're looking at presidential impeachments in american history
hello welcome to the daily bell ringer please don't forget to subscribe and take a look at
the questions down in the description so with so much talk and debate about impeachment currently
going on i thought it might be a good idea to take some time to look at presidential impeachments in
u.s history now just a quick disclaimer i'm not making any political statement or really taking
any any stance on the issue of this in this video this video is just meant to purely inform and
hopefully to aid you in understanding the issue before us so what is impeachment impeachment is
the removal of a government official from office in article 2 section 4 of the us constitution
reasons for impeachment of a president are described as conviction of treason bribery
or other high crimes and misdemeanors now as far as who has the power to impeach a president
that would fall to the legislative branch or congress according to article one of the
constitution the process of impeachment is really a two-part process the first part of the process
starts in the house of representatives where a member of the house has to call for proceedings
to begin or the house passes a resolution the speaker of the house then passes it on to the
house judiciary committee that has to decide if there's enough evidence for impeachment if they
agree that they have enough evidence they then draft articles of impeachment which are voted on
in the house of representatives now in the house they simply have to get a majority vote or over
50 percent to vote in favor of impeachment if passed the articles then go on to the second
step and that is in the senate here the senate has to look at the articles of impeachment and get a
two-thirds majority vote in favor of impeachment for the official to be impeached or removed from
office they can then take it a step further and vote to ban that person from ever holding a public
office again and then they could there could even be criminal charges brought against a president
now considering the us constitution was written in 1787 over 230 years ago and we have never
officially fully impeached a president and only three presidents have had impeachment
proceedings begun against them that kind of tells you how rare it is for an impeachment to happen
like i said only three presidents have ever had impeachment proceedings brought against them
the 17th president andrew johnson who of course took over as president after the assassination
of abraham lincoln the 42nd president bill clinton and the 45th president donald trump
who has had impeachment proceedings brought against him twice even after he was out
of office as president andrew johnson's impeachment which i'll make a whole other
bell ringer about boiled down to politics and early disagreement over reconstruction
johnson was a democrat and in the wake of the civil war a group known as the radical republicans
took control of congress they passed a law called the tenure of office act in 1867 and
actually overrode johnson's veto to get it passed the act basically said a president
could not dismiss an appointed official without congressional approval well in february of 1868
johnson dismissed the secretary of war edwin stanton this defied the tenure of office act
and so congress began impeachment proceedings on february 24 1868 johnson was impeached by the
house of representatives but in the senate the impeachment fell short by only one vote so one
vote short of the two-thirds necessary so johnson remained in office really only by one vote until
1869 when ulysses s grant took the office as for president bill clinton impeachment proceedings
against him were brought up in 1998 accusing him of having an inappropriate relationship
with a woman working in the white house when questioned about the relationship in front
of a grand jury which a grand jury is a jury that decides the validity or dependability of evidence
against someone clinton denied the relationship in front of the grand jury then evidence was revealed
that the relationship did happen so congress brought up articles of perjury or lying to a
jury and obstruction of justice against clinton in december of 1998 the house voted to impeach
president clinton but then it went to the senate and there it could not even get a majority vote
in favor of impeachment so clinton remained in office as president of the united states
until the end of his two terms in the year 2000 as for president donald trump his first impeachment
occurred in 2019 when charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice were brought up against
him after claims that he had been involved in foreign interference into the presidential
election of 2020. the house of representatives formally impeached president trump in december
of 2019. it then went to the senate where they acquitted the president or basically
said there was not sufficient evidence to vote for impeachment but then the second impeachment
occurred after the january 6 2021 capitol riots in which the house of representatives
brought charges of incitement of insurrection or accusing president trump of causing or encouraging
the riots on january 13 2021 the house formally voted and impeached trump for the second time
currently as i'm recording this video right now the impeachment articles are being debated in the
senate and it'll be interesting to see you know what their vote is however another wrinkle to this
second impeachment is the fact that donald trump is no longer the president of the united states
with joe biden being sworn in on january 20th of 2021 so this brings up another discussion
of can an official that is no longer in office be impeached can congress ban donald trump from
ever holding office again all important questions but we'll have to wait and see
what history is made so with that hopefully you learned something and thanks for watching you