I just read on CNN that the House Speaker is threatening to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary. Congress can impeach the President’s Cabinet?
Yes. The Constitution says “all civil officers of the United States” may be removed from office via impeachment.
Yes:
Thanks, Past Tense.
“A simple majority”. Wow. If a party controlled both houses, it could remove all of the cabinet members. From another thread, my naive surprise at how our government depends upon people being honest and civil.
Found the precedent. William Belknap, who was Grant’s Secretary of War, was impeached in 1876. Belknap resigned but the House decided to proceed with the impeachment resolution. The Senate ended up voting not to convict Belknap (although there was a majority that voted to do so).
Note:
The official who is impeached may continue to serve their term until a trial leads to a judgement that directs their removal from office or until they leave office through other means, such as resignation. A two-thirds majority of the senators present at the trial is required for conviction according to Article One, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution.
So yes everyone could be impeached–but they can’t be removed from office without 2/3 of the Senators–and it is exceptionally rare that 2/3 of the Senate are from one party. And even if that were true there would probably be some who would not vote for removal on purely political grounds.
Let us hope so.
Belknap fixed a job as Indian agent for one of his wife’s friends.
Same old same old from the news in the last few years…
“Impeach” is like a criminal charge, a motion passed by the House.
Removal from office is following the resulting trial in the Senate if convicted.
I understand that, but they are not impeaching him because he gave someone a cushy job and took kick backs, they are impeaching him because they don’t like his position on illegal immigrants.
“Civil officers” includes all non-military positions that are subject to Senate confirmation. So not only cabinet members, but the senior tier of all executive departments (i.e. Assistant Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, etc.) as well as all federal judges are subject to impeachment.
While the current understanding is that impeachment does not cover Senators and Representative, the very first impeachment was of Senator William Blount in 1797. Ultimately the Senate concluded that Blount was not a civil officer subject to impeachment and voted to dismiss the articles because that body lacked jurisdiction.
And the reason is that the Senate is always hesitant to convict someone that has resigned and it is customary to dismiss the impeachment when the person resigns as
a) The purpose has been served. The person is out of office.
b) Some argued that once out of office, there was no more jurisdiction as the person was no longer a civil officer.
It was in Belknap’s case that the Senate decided it still maintained jurisdiction because although removing him from office was moot, the Senate could vote that he could not take an office in the future. However enough Senators were uncomfortable with convicting a person no longer in office that he was acquitted despite his guilt.
I’ll add that after Belknap, the tradition has returned that if a person resigns the charges are dismissed.
In my opinion, this is a reasonable interpretation. I feel “civil officers” should refer to appointed, rather than elected, officials (with the explicit exception of the President and Vice President).
Not quite. They claim that they are impeaching because he is not carrying out his job of preventing illegal immigration.
Sounds political to me. He wasn’t letting them drown while bleeding from razor wore.
Minnesota state government had a similar situation a few years ago. They didn’t impeach cabinet members; they just never confirmed them (so always at risk for a vote to not confirm them (thus removal from office).
The Democratic (DFL) Governor, appointed people to his cabinet offices. But the Senate, with a slight Republican majority, decided to just not get around to confirming those appointments. So they served as Acting Secretary of … for a few years.
Then, when they did something the Republican Senators disapproved of, they suddenly scheduled a confirmation hearing and voted to NOT confirm the appointment. So that person was forced out, and the Governor had to appoint someone else (who the Senate then didn’t bother to confirm…). They did this to the Secretary of Health & Human Services, when she kept listening to doctors and saying this Covid-19 was something serious – they forced her out of office.
Because of this, and similar non-performance, they were voted out, and the Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate. That formed a tri-fect a with the Democratic Governor, and passed a lot of legislation favored by democrats. Including introducing a bill that says Governor cabinet appointments are deemed confirmed if the Senate fails to act on them within 60 days.
I like that last one. Would like to see that enacted for federal appointees also.
It’s not unusual for a political dispute to degenerate into finding any and all excuses to go further. “I don’t like your position” is not an impeachable offense, but presumably using the handicapped parking or sending your secretary to get your dry cleaning would be…
I agree.
The other consideration is that Article I Section 5 allows each house to expel a member. Why would they be open to impeachment if there was already a process in place to expel them from office.
Impeachment is an inherently political decision.