| According to Merriam-Webster, impeachment means "to charge with a crime or misdemeanor; specifically : to charge a public official before a competent tribunal with misconduct in office." According to the Court of Public Opinion, many of our public officials should have been impeached. There have been thirty-five attempts at impeachment, but only nine of those went to trial. Of those, two were Presidential impeachments; Andrew Johnson and William J. Clinton. The most infamous impeachment hearing was that of President Richard Nixon, who ended up resigning before impeachment occurred.
Impeached:
JOHNSON (1808-1875)
The only Southern senator to refuse to resign from the Senate in the lead-up to the Civil War, Andrew Johnson was a Unionist and later Vice President of the United States who became the 17th president in 1865 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. There were two successive attempts by Congress to impeach Johnson, the first in 1867. The first attempt originated in a long list of complaints against the president which eventually resulted in a failed vote in the US House of Representatives, 57-108, against removing him from office. The second and successful impeachment attempt occurred in the House in 1868. It was the first impeachment of a president in US history. That attempt was based upon Johnson's alleged violation of the Tenure of Office Act in the matter of his appointment of the new Secretary of War.
After passing the House, a total of eleven articles of impeachment were laid out before the Senate and the "Radical Republicans" who were angered by Johnson's vetoes of civil rights bills and by his placatory attitude toward the former Confederate states and his attempts to reincorporate them quickly back into the Union. However, due to their displeasure with the proceedings, the Radical Republicans decided to vote against conviction, bucking public opinion and their own party. The Senate acquitted Johnson by a single vote.
CLINTON (born 1946)
William "Bill" Clinton, a Democrat, and the forty-second president of the United States, was impeached by the US House of Representatives on December 19, 1998, on articles of perjury and of obstruction of justice arising from the sex scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and from the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by a former Arkansas government employee named Paula Jones.
An independent investigation into Clinton's activities before and after he entered the White House, was authorized by Attorney General Janet Reno and led by Counsel Kenneth Starr. It unearthed the Lewinsky relationship during its probe of Jones' charges against Clinton and its inquiries into the failed land deal known as Whitewater, among other abuses.
The House conviction split along partisan lines, with only five Democratic Representatives voting to impeach Clinton during the course of the trial proceedings (Two other impeachment articles, one for obstruction and for abuse of power, failed in the House). When the articles of impeachment reached the Senate, however, they did not make the required two-thirds vote, and Clinton was acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. The House impeachment was only the second impeachment of a president in US history.
The One Who Got Away:
NIXON (1913-1994)
Richard M. Nixon, a Republican and the thirty-seventh president of the United States, faced the near-certainty of impeachment due to various secret and illegal activities conducted by his Committee to Re-Elect the President campaign.
On June 17, 1972, five men, whose connections to the Committee were later exposed, were caught trying to break into Democratic presidential campaign headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. The ensuing scandal, known as Watergate, involved top members of the Nixon administration, many of whom resigned or became liable for prosecution. Watergate cost Nixon political support during his re-election campaign and made him extremely vulnerable to potential impeachment.
On July 27, 1974, the US House of Representatives voted to impeach him on an article of obstruction of justice arising from evidence that he knew about, and had tried to cover up, the attempted break-in, and that he had tried to convince administration officials to stop the cover-up probe launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This first step toward impeachment was bi-partisan, with 27-11 voting in favor of the article of obstruction. Nixon resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, the only president of the US to resign from office.
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