The Constitution further provides that all civil officers of the United States may be impeached. Joseph Story , in his Commentaries on the Constitution , wrote that "all officers of the United States, therefore, who hold their appointments under the national government, whether their duties are executive or judicial, in the highest or in the lowest departments of the government, with the exception of officers in the army and navy, are properly civil officers within the meaning of the constitution, and liable to impeachment.
The Constitution, in the Appointments Clause , provides the president with the power to appoint officers of the United States which are subject to Senate confirmation and distinguishes these officials from those inferior officers that the Congress may, by law, grant the president the sole power to appoint i.
The U. Supreme Court further recognized the distinction in the two categories under the appointments clause, categorizing these as principal officers and inferior officers respectively, in Edmond v. United States. In Buckley v. Valeo , the court defined an officer as "any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States.
Therefore, as Cole and Garvey note, [1]. Any official exercising 'significant authority' including both principal and inferior officers, would therefore qualify as a 'civil Officer' subject to impeachment. This view would permit Congress to impeach and remove any executive branch 'officer,' including many deputy political appointees and certain administrative judges.
William Blount of Tennessee was the first individual ever impeached by the United States House of Representatives and, to this day, is the only member of Congress ever to have been impeached. The House impeached Blount on July 7, , for allegedly conspiring to incite Native Americans and frontiersmen to attack the Spanish lands of Florida and Louisiana in order to give them to England.
After the impeachment vote in the House, but before Blount's impeachment trial in the Senate, the Senate voted to expel Blount under provisions of Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution.
Due to a lack of jurisdiction in Tennessee , where Blount fled after his conviction, the Senate could not extradite Blount for his impeachment trial. Two years later, in , the Senate determined that Blount was not a civil officer under the definition of the Constitution and, therefore, could not be impeached. The Senate dismissed the charges against Blount for lack of jurisdiction.
Since , the House has not impeached another member of Congress. On February 24, , President Andrew Johnson became the first sitting president to be impeached. Following Congress' passage of the Tenure of Office Act, forbidding the president from removing federal officials without the approval of Congress, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replaced him with Ulysses S.
Johnson hoped to challenge the constitutionality of the Act. The House charged him with violating the Act and passed an impeachment resolution Johnson was acquitted by the Senate on May 16, , by a vote of , one vote short of two-thirds.
Seven Republican senators broke ranks with the party to prevent Johnson's conviction. President William Jefferson Clinton , the second president to be impeached, was charged by the U. House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, The first article of impeachment for perjury passed the House by a vote of , while the second vote on obstruction of justice passed by House Republicans accused Clinton of lying and having others lie, hiding the affair.
Two other charges, perjury in regards to an affair with Paula Jones and abuse of power, were rejected by the House. The perjury charge failed by a vote of while the obstruction of justice charge failed on a tied vote of Donald Trump was the third president to be impeached.
He was impeached first in and a second time in On December 18, , the U. House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The first article passed by a vote of and the second And when the people's branch has spoken and determines that a president should be impeached and removed from office, that judgment may, or perhaps inherently will, include a judgment that the president is no longer eligible for federal office.
So if the House and Senate address the issue in the articles of impeachment—we will undoubtably be done with the offending president. The Framers of the Constitution may have been unenlightened on race. But they thought of this one. Bowman also pointed out another precedent: the impeachment trial of William Belknap, who served as Secretary of War for President Ulysses S. Belknap faced allegations of receiving kickbacks, and he resigned moments before the House approved articles of impeachment.
Belknap, the respondent, is amenable to trial by impeachment for acts done as Secretary of War, notwithstanding his resignation of said office before he was impeached. A third precedent is the case of federal judge West Hughes Humphries. Humphries left the federal bench in Tennessee to join the Confederacy as a judge without resigning his federal commission. In January , House member John Bingham led the investigating committee, which charged Humphries with high crimes and misdemeanors.
The Senate found Humphries guilty on seven charges in June , and in a separate vote, a unanimous Senate disqualified Humphries from holding federal office again.
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