The Senate trial took place after President Trump left office. He was found not guilty, though seven Republican senators joined Democrats in voting to convict, making it the most bi-partisan Senate impeachment vote in history. Despite being complicit in one of the greatest political scandals in U. He resigned before the House of Representatives had a chance to impeach him. On July 27, , after seven months of deliberations, the House Judiciary Committee approved the first of five proposed articles of impeachment against Nixon, charging the president with obstruction of justice in an effort to shield himself from the ongoing Watergate investigation.
Only a handful of Republicans in the judiciary committee voted to approve the articles of impeachment, and it was unclear at the time if there would be enough votes in the full House to formally impeach the president. But everything changed on August 5, , when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release unedited tapes of his Oval Office conversations with White House staffers during the Watergate investigation. The transcript included the following:. JOHN W. DEAN: I would say these people are going to cost, uh, a million dollars over the next, uh, two years.
Once the tapes were made public, Nixon got word from Republican congressional leadership that all but 15 Senators would likely vote against him in an impeachment trial, more than enough to remove him from office. To save himself the indignity of becoming the first sitting president fired by Congress, Nixon resigned on August 8, Most of his White House legal counsel, including John Dean, went to jail for their involvement in Watergate.
A significant number of U. But few of those accusations were taken seriously by Congress. There were even rumblings about impeaching the nation's first president, George Washington , by those who opposed his policies. Those calls, however, did not reach the point of becoming formal resolutions or charges. John Tyler was the first president to face impeachment charges.
Between and , a congressman introduced two impeachment resolutions against Herbert Hoover. Both were eventually tabled by large margins. More recently, both Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush were the subject of impeachment resolutions submitted by Henry B. Gonzales, a Democratic representative from Texas, but none of the resolutions were taken up for a vote in the House Judiciary Committee. George W. Bush faced a slightly more serious impeachment threat when Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced a House resolution charging Bush with a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors, including war crimes.
In , Republican Representative Walter Jones submitted a House resolution charging the president with authorizing military action in Libya without the consent of Congress. On Feb. His acquittal came on a near party-line vote, reinforcing divisions at the end of a bitterly partisan process.
The Senate voted to acquit Trump on abuse of power and to acquit him on obstruction of Congress; Sen. Mitt Romney , a Republican from Utah, was the only senator of either party to break ranks, voting to convict Trump on the abuse of power charge. Many of the Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump said the final verdict should be left up to the voters at the ballot box in Trump and some of his associates say that impeachment could benefit him politically by mobilizing his base, while others have argued that the proceedings will contribute to the aura of chaos around his administration.
Given that only three presidents have ever been impeached, more of them have faced Congressional calls for impeachment than one might expect.
After succeeding President William Henry Harrison, who died after just one month in office, Tyler vetoed legislation backed by his own Whig Party and that Harrison had promised to support. The Whigs kicked Tyler out of their party, and the House received a petition for a resolution asking him to resign or else face the possibility of impeachment. The President best known for coming to the brink of impeachment — but not actually getting impeached — was Richard Nixon.
In recent American history, Presidents from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama have faced discussion, ranging from credible to dubious and politically charged, of their impeachment. Contact us at letters time. History politics What to Know About the U. By Tara Law. Lincoln's successor President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Get our History Newsletter. Put today's news in context and see highlights from the archives.
Please enter a valid email address. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now. Johnson was impeached on February 24, , on charges of "violating the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton from office," as noted at the House website. The former president was impeached on December 19, , on charges of "lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice," according to the House website.
Clinton initially claimed he "never had sexual relations" with Lewinsky, who was a year-old unpaid intern at the time of the affair.
His impeachment trial was held by the Senate from January 7 to February 12 in Clinton was also acquitted. Trump was the only president to have been impeached twice. He was first impeached on December 18, on charges of "abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was impeached a second time on January 13, on "the charge of incitement of insurrection," following the riots at the U.
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