Not surprisingly, a lot of people had a lot of questions about this whole impeachment process. Since it’s 2019, they took to Google to try to find some answers. Our web team collated some of the top impeachment questions and trends to see what jumped out.
(Fun fact: Even though impeachment dominated news programs all day, it didn’t make it on the top 10 Google search list in the U.S. Those honors mostly fell to reality television.)
First theme: How does the impeachment process work?
Ultimately, impeachment is a political process rather than a legal one. Having said that, it can be helpful to picture it in the framework of a legal trial. In a trial, you have a prosecutor and you have a jury. The US House of Representatives serves as the “prosecutor” in the trial, using its constitutional oversight powers to gather evidence and hold hearings.
After it does this, a vote will be held. A majority vote in favor of impeachment sends the case over the Senate, which acts as the “jury” in the trial. The Senate decides whether or not to convict the president of the accusations in the articles of impeachment. Two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) is required to convict the president, thus removing him from office. If that were to happen, the Vice President would assume the role of the presidency.
Second theme: Partisanship
We’ve seen a bit of blurriness along the party lines, but not much. Most Democrats have come out to criticize President Trump, and many are now calling for an impeachment inquiry. Republicans—with a few notable exceptions, such as Utah Senator Mitt Romney—have defended him. The current New York Times count in the House of Representatives has 218 supporting this impeachment inquiry. Of those 218, 217 are Democrats and 1 is an Independent.
Third theme: What did Andrew Johnson do to get himself impeached?
Andrew Johnson served as president following the Civil War. He was Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President and took over after Lincoln was assassinated. History.com has a great in-depth look into how his tenure lead to impeachment, but the TL;DR version: Congress passed a law at the time saying a president could not remove government officials from office without Senate approval, but Johnson tried to replace his Secretary of War without their OK anyway.
Johnson was impeached in the House but was not convicted in the Senate. No president has ever been convicted and removed from office (though Richard Nixon probably would have been, had he not resigned).
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