On an imgur thread this morning, a disagreeable fellow posited the following:
Congress has the power to impeach individuals who are not currently in office.
Impeachment may result in the disqualification of a citizen to hold public office, per Article I Section 3.
Congress could, in theory, impeach Hilary Clinton and disqualify her from holding office.
(This was wrapped into a conspiracy theory about the Republicans tacitly accepting Clinton as the next President.)
Is there any historical precedent for proposition 1? This person argued that since the House printed Nixon’s impeachment into the congressional record after he resigned, there is procedural precedent; he also made the argument that allowing someone to avoid impeachment by resigning would render the possible punishment of disqualification impossible to enforce. Neither objection rings true to me, but I find it difficult to articulate why.
(I’d include a link, but I worry that it would run afoul of our prohibition on starting board wars.)
SFAIK, a congressional committee approved (by vote of the committee) the text of an impeachment resolution referring to Nixon, but (because of Nixon’s intervening resignation) that resolution was never voted upon by the House of Representatives. Nixon was therefore never impeached.
Impeachment is defined as removal from office. I can’t imagine the House trying to impeach someone not in office. I can’t imagine what that person would do except to laugh at them. Along with the rest of the country.
The Nixon example shows that impeachment stops when a person is no longer in office. The House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment but they never went to the full House because he resigned. It shows the exact opposite of what your disagreeable fellow intended.
Any report, including the report on articles of impeachment, can be entered in the Congressional Record by a committee to create a final permanent record of its work. **It does not become by this something adopted by the Congress. **Nixon was never impeached. At all. Clinton and Andrew Johnson were impeached, and prevailed.
Text of the Constitution:
You have to BE a civil officer of the United States to be impeached. You cannot impeach a private citizen. By resigning first Nixon made it moot to proceed.
You’re right. I was using “impeachment” as a shortening of the “impeachment process” which includes impeachment and a vote finding guilt. That’s common usage, and it was the OP’s usage, but it can be nitpicked. That’s what the Dope is for.
Just like it’s for calling conspiracy idiots idiots.
While it’s true that the House is not in session and will reconvene on Nov 14, 2016 at 2:00pm, the Senate was called to order by Acting President pro tempore the Honorable DAVID PERDUE, a Senator from the State of Georgia, on November 7, 2016 at 10:30 and 1 second a.m.
At 10:30 and 28 seconds a.m. it adjourned until Thursday, November 10, 2016, at 10 a.m.
The Republicans really don’t want to take a chance on President Obama making any recess appointments.
Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, was impeached for corruption and quickly resigned, but the Senate went on with the “trial” anyway. He was “acquitted” when a majority of Senators thought the process was moot, despite the minority that wanted to formally disqualify him from future office.
Judge Alcee Hastings was “convicted” (corruption again) and removed from the bench, but not disqualified in consideration of the inconvenient fact that he had been acquitted at his criminal trial (the key witness clammed up). He played the race card and got elected to Congress.
My understanding is that the President is (kinda sorta) the Chief Criminal Prosecutor of the USA … so we have a situation where the President is asked to prosecute himself/herself … non-ideal to say the least … so we have the alternate process of impeachment and removal from office … then the next President can prosecute …
Although this removal from office was rendered moot with Nixon’s resignation … President Ford still had to issue a pardon to make to whole affair moot … Nixon could still have been brought to trial even after he resigned … although I will not speculate on what would have happened in court …
Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. It is part of the checks and balances between the three branches of government and should only be viewed in that light.
The point of impeachment is that you cannot rely on the regular judiciary system to successfully prosecute the holders of high office who appoint the judiciary (not to mention the judiciary themselves). So those office holders are subject to a different system to everyone else: impeachment.
No one who is not a high office holder is subject to impeachment, and I imagine it would be very unconstitutional to do so (it would smack of the star chamber which the constitution was very much intended to prevent)
Did you italicize moot there to mean that you don’t know what the word means? By resigning first, Nixon made it irrelevant to proceed. There was no point to be debated thereafter.