Im­peach­ment Sets Un­known Fu­ture Prece­dent

WASH­ING­TON, D.C. -- Fol­low­ing the im­peach­ment and ac­quit­tal of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, po­lit­i­cal pun­dits and politi­cians spec­u­lated the fu­ture of im­peach­ment.  

Some crit­ics ar­gued the De­mo­c­ra­tic Party ma­jor­ity House voted to im­peach Trump based on lit­tle ev­i­dence. Other crit­ics said the Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors re­fused to ac­knowl­edge the facts by over­whelm­ingly vot­ing to ac­quit Trump. 

“It’s pretty clear the pres­i­dent of the United States did learn a les­son: the les­son he can do what­ever he wants, when­ever he wants, he can abuse his of­fice, he’ll never ever be held ac­count­able by this Sen­ate,” Sen. Sher­rod Brown, an Ohio De­mo­c­rat, said ac­cord­ing to the As­so­ci­ated Press (Feb. 13, 2020).  

Trump made a phone call to Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skiy on July 25, 2019. Ac­cord­ing to a White House tran­script, he sug­gested Ze­len­skiy look into for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deal­ings in Ukraine. He al­legedly told the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent that he would with­hold U.S. mil­i­tary aid to the coun­try if Ukraine did not com­ply. 

Af­ter the re­lease of mul­ti­ple whistle­blower com­plaints, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi an­nounced a for­mal im­peach­ment in­quiry on Sept. 24. 

The House lis­tened to sev­eral tes­ti­monies and ap­proved two ar­ti­cles of im­peach­ment: ob­struc­tion of Con­gress and abuse of power. But the Sen­ate ac­quit­ted Trump on both ar­ti­cles, vot­ing 52 to 48 on one, and 53 to 47 on an­other. 

The Sen­ate needed 67 votes against ac­quit­ting on each ar­ti­cle to con­vict Trump. No U.S. pres­i­dent in his­tory has been re­moved from of­fice. But Trump is the third U.S. pres­i­dent to be im­peached. 

Dave Schmidt, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of his­tory at Bethel Uni­ver­sity, said im­peach­ment might be more com­mon in the fu­ture. 

“All the crit­i­cism that Trump has got­ten de­serves scrutiny,” Schmidt said. “The con­ver­sa­tions with…the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, should that be looked into? Sure. Were these im­peach­able of­fenses? I don’t think so.” 

Schmidt said past U.S. pres­i­dents were en­gaged in sim­i­lar ac­tiv­i­ties with for­eign na­tions. If Trump’s ac­tions were im­peach­able, then there are more ac­tions of mis­con­duct that could be con­sid­ered im­peach­able in the fu­ture. 

“I think the whole process was po­lit­i­cal and not in­tended to dis­cover ev­i­dence,” Schmidt said. “The hear­ings them­selves were not de­signed to find the facts. The hear­ings were used to iden­tify the ba­sis for im­peach­ment.” 

While im­peach­ment to­day func­tions as a par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal tool, the found­ing fa­thers en­vi­sioned a non­par­ti­san process. Alexan­der Hamil­ton wrote in The Fed­er­al­ist Pa­pers in 1788, that the Sen­ate has the fi­nal ver­dict be­cause it should func­tion above pol­i­tics.  

He also wrote that po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions dam­age the im­peach­ment process. Tom LaFoun­tain, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at Bethel Uni­ver­sity, said Hamil­ton’s fears came true. The cre­ation of po­lit­i­cal par­ties frac­tured po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions like the Sen­ate. 

“I think im­peach­ment is one of those sit­u­a­tions where it sim­ply won’t work and prob­a­bly can’t work,” John Haas, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­tory at Bethel, said. “Be­cause where [the founders] en­vi­sioned, you would have 100 sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als us­ing their in­di­vid­ual judge­ment to as­sess the case on its mer­its with a lot of po­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion mixed in.” 

Haas com­pared im­peach­ment to a jury pay­ing no at­ten­tion to trial ev­i­dence and only unit­ing to take down the pros­e­cu­tor.  

Hamil­ton did not in­clude rules for the Sen­ate trial ei­ther. LaFoun­tain said the most in­ter­est­ing part of the trial was see­ing the Sen­ate make up the rules. 

“When you think about it…not only then does the party in power con­trol the vote, they kind of con­trol how it’s go­ing to play out, too,” LaFoun­tain said. “Be­cause cer­tainly they’ll have the votes to be able to…make the rules for the trial it­self.” 

The Sen­ate’s vote to block sub­poena power demon­strated the lack of trial rules. On Jan. 6, 2020, John Bolton, for­mer U.S. na­tional se­cu­rity ad­viser, said he would tes­tify to the Sen­ate if they sub­poe­naed him. But the Re­pub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate voted against hav­ing any wit­nesses tes­tify. 

LaFoun­tain said the power to sub­poena the pres­i­dent has been weak­ened for fu­ture im­peach­ments.  

“What would hap­pen is the next time a pres­i­dent is in this sit­u­a­tion, he can sim­ply stonewall,” LaFoun­tain said. “Noth­ing’s go­ing to hap­pen on the sub­poena un­til it goes up in front of the Supreme Court.” 

Trump’s re­fusal to com­ply to the House’s sub­poena set a prece­dent for fu­ture pres­i­dents.  

Haas said Trump changed the pres­i­dency, which could al­ter the im­peach­ment process. Now, peo­ple ex­pect the pres­i­dent to unite the po­lit­i­cal base, rather than the whole na­tion. 

Ac­cord­ing to the Feb. 5 is­sue of Newsweek, Trump polled near a three-year high the day of his Sen­ate ac­quit­tal. De­spite his flaws and mis­con­duct, im­peach­ment did not af­fect the coun­try’s view of him. 

“The most im­por­tant thing for fu­ture par­ties in the House that are con­tem­plat­ing im­peach­ment is go­ing to be: Where do our vot­ers stand?” Haas said. “On top of that, it’s go­ing to be how out­ra­geous and ob­vi­ous is…what­ever the ac­tion was that trig­gered the im­peach­ment.” 

Alan Der­showitz, an at­tor­ney for Trump, sparked con­tro­versy when mak­ing his le­gal ar­gu­ment. He ar­gued that the pres­i­dent could use a quid pro quo for per­sonal po­lit­i­cal ben­e­fit if they be­lieve their re­elec­tion is of pub­lic in­ter­est. 

Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead House man­ager, re­jected Der­show­itz’s the­ory, ac­cord­ing to Politico (Jan. 30, 2020). Schiff said Der­show­itz’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion gives pres­i­dents the im­mu­nity to fur­ther their in­ter­ests. 

While Haas agreed that Der­showitz went too far, he said Der­showitz made a Nixon­ian ar­gu­ment. 

“Is the con­sti­tu­tion a sui­cide pact?” Haas said. “That’s one of the ques­tions. Do you have to fol­low the con­sti­tu­tion to a T, even if it means los­ing the na­tion?” 

De­spite im­peach­men­t’s pro­found ef­fect on the na­tion, the con­ser­va­tion at Bethel has been min­i­mal. LaFoun­tain and Schmidt both said stu­dents do not want to talk about it be­cause of Bethel’s ho­mo­ge­neous po­lit­i­cal view. 

Haas rec­om­mended stu­dents be aware of what is go­ing on, but not to worry. 

“Since it is our coun­try and our tax dol­lars that pay for what it does and it is our guilt in cases where wrong has been done, then we should be aware,” Haas said. “We are not dis­con­nected from things [that] are be­ing done pre­sum­ably for our ben­e­fit just be­cause we don’t know about them.”