Clinton Impeachment Research Paper

Impeachment

The right to impeach public officials is stated in Article 1 and Article 2 of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 and 3, basically describe the procedure of impeachment while Article 2, Section 4, indicates the grounds for impeachment: “ the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The removal of an official from office requires an impeachment from the House of Representatives and a trial and conviction by the Senate. The House must endorse a majority vote in order to carry out the impeachment, meanwhile conviction requires a two-thirds vote by the Senate. The vice president
During this time Clinton was under investigation for suspicious real estate dealing, but the investigation was soon discarded when it failed to provide actual evidence. However, Kenneth Starr, an Independent Counsel, managed to disentangle a series of alleged secual advances and affairs in Clinton’s past. The trial eventually led to Monica S. Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Clinton denied any association with the intern only to later on reveal on August of 1998 that he had had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky during her internship. On September 9, 1998 the Starr Report, which outlined the findings of Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation, was delivered to the House of Representatives and eventually was released to the public. Many believed the report to be a political attack against the President opposed to an explanation for his impeachment. Out of the eleven grounds for impeachment that were cited within the report, only four were approved by the House Judiciary Committee: abuse of power, grand jury perjury, civil suit perjury, and obstruction of justice. On December 19 the House of Representatives held its vote, Clinton was impeached on founds of grand jury perjury and obstruction of justice. Meanwhile the Senate Republicans were incapable of of obtaining the two-thirds majority vote that was required for his conviction. On February 12, 1999, the Senate cleared Clinton of
Johnson for example was charged for defying the law, while Clinton was charged for defying moral value. At least that’s what it looks like, yet neither of them were actually impeached. With that in mind it’s no wonder why no other president after Clinton has been impeached. Clearly the Houses have realized that whether the charges be unconstitutional or immoral doesn’t actually matter the resulting vote will always be subject to the political stance of the candidate. If they are Republican then they’ll have little to none impeachment votes from that party and the same goes for if the charged is a democrat. This system, in my opinion, seems rather flawed and is basically subject to high levels of peer pressure. Of course this is only applicable if the voting is done in front of the entire House. Although the people within the House are recognized for standing by their beliefs they are at the end of the day still humans. And as humans we have a tendency of wanting to fit in. So when I think about the voting process I imagine a group of teenagers who want to be accepted into this social group and in order to do so they must relinquish their own beliefs in an attempt to be accepted. Similarly all democrats will oppose an impeachment of a democrat if their colleagues do the same and all republicans will vote against the impeachment of a republican if their colleagues vote against it