Let’s Talk about Impeachment

I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of the latest Trump scandal, or as many are coming to think of it, the straw that broke the camel’s back. But basically the President asked the Ukrainian President to investigate a political rival (Joe Biden and his son).

There have only ever been three other presidents who have ever been threatened with impeachment, and two of them have been impeached, one resigned before he was impeached. No president has ever been removed from office.

In the United States impeachment is when the House of Representatives lays formal charges against the president. It is an indictment. All it takes is a simple majority in the House to impeach the president of the United States. After the impeachment there is a trial, where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court acts as the judge and the Senate acts as the jury. Once that is over the Senate will vote. It takes a 2/3rds vote to convict and throw the president out of office.

As of the current makeup of the Congress, the president will likely be impeached, but will probably not be thrown out of office. I have some questions. How long will Speaker Pelosi allow the investigations to go on? If we take the Clinton impeachment proceedings as an example the actual impeachment proceedings went from October-December, President Clinton was impeached in December and his trial concluded in early February. Does Pelosi want the 2020 election to be about the impeachment trial? Does she want to make sure the trial is before the 2020 election? Is this some Hail Mary pass to keep her job?

Not to say that what I think the President has done is right? But it just seems like an odd time to put impeachment back on the table when after the 2018 elections she wanted to push it off the table. What makes everything different now?