Trump is only the third President to be accused of impeachment (impeachment only means to be charged with removal). The first was Johnson, he alleged crime was bs and later the supreme court even invalidated it. He was impeached, in reality, for political reasons. After the civil war, he decided to go easy on the south and not use the federal government to enforce “federally protected rights”. The senate did not remove him from office, but by only one vote.
The second President to be impeached was Bill Clinton. Now Bill was charged with an actual crime, perjury. He was guilty of the crime and lost his law license because of it. In fact he actually later admitted to perjury. He was charged with other crimes; but, in the end it was about the perjury. He faced a senate trial and while a bi-partisan group found him guilty (over 50%), the general idea at the time was that he shouldn’t be removed for lying about adultery and 67 senators did not vote to remove. I remember, I was there.
Nixon faced impeachment but the house never voted on it as a whole and articles were never delivered to the senate because he left office first and was given a pardon by President Ford.
That is the history of impeachment in America. That is basically how the history books look back on them. Now we get to history and Trump. He will be the only one not charged with an actual crime. He will be the only without at least a majority voting to convict. He will in fact be the only one found not guilty.
Having said all that, this will be seen as a turning point in how impeachment is used. Unfortunately, I fear in the future it will be used as a purely political form of protest. That was not it’s intent and is actually the exact opposite of it’s intent.
If you want to understand the intent of impeachment, understand we had ten presidents before Washington, look up the Articles of Confederation. They could be removed for political reasons alone and were regularly, that is why we created an independent executive office for the President.
Act in haste, repent in leisure. I don’t care if you love Trump or hate Trump. I am not a partisan. As a constitutional scholar (I have an American Jurisprudence from the law school I graduated from with honors) I have to ask myself why they impeached Trump. My best answer is not because of the coming election (mostly) and not because they dislike him. Pelosi allowed Trump to be impeached because the Democratic party is splitting and she feared the party being taken over by the “progressives” or “socialists” or whatever you wish to call them. She gave them the red meat they demanded to retain control.
The “progressives” want to run on universal healthcare, student loan forgiveness and open borders. The corporate democrats are owned by the banks and high tech and don’t want those things. Just to be open, I am for universal healthcare, am in favor of loan reductions and no interest debt for them and am absolutely against open borders for health, safety and fairness reasons. I also do not plan on voting in the coming Presidential election.
h/t MQ