Can a President Who Is Impeached but Not Removed Serve a Second Term

Trump impeachment: Democrats unveil formal charges

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Media caption,

Democrat Jerry Nadler announces the articles of impeachment

The Democratic-controlled U.s. House Judiciary Committee has unveiled charges against President Donald Trump, a key move in impeaching him.

The first article revealed by commission chief Jerry Nadler accuses Mr Trump of corruption of ability and the 2d accuses him of obstructing Congress.

The Republican president is said to have withheld help to Ukraine for domestic political reasons.

A defiant Mr Trump has urged the Senate to endeavour him "sooner than later".

"The president wants a trial," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told BBC News.

Mr Trump insists he has done "nothing wrong" and has dismissed the impeachment process as "madness".

If the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee votes to approve the manufactures later this week, they will then exist submitted to the lower chamber for a full vote.

If, in plow, the articles are approved by the Firm - which is controlled by the Democrats - an impeachment trial in the Republican-held Senate will take place, possibly early on in January.

Media explanation,

What does it accept to impeach a president?

The impeachment procedure was launched later on an anonymous whistleblower complained to Congress in September about a July phone call by Mr Trump to the president of Ukraine.

Nosotros knew it was coming. The talk has been of niggling else, impeachment seems to be the only thing I've been reporting on for these past couple of months.

But when the chairman of the Judiciary Committee charged the president with "high crimes and misdemeanours", it still made the hairs on the dorsum of my neck stand up. For all the sound and fury of today's politics, this is non an everyday occurrence.

If the Firm of Representatives votes to impeach Donald J Trump, he will join Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998) as the just other presidents to be sanctioned in this mode since American independence.

But that'due south for the history books. It's what happens next that matters. Volition this be a grievous blow to Donald Trump winning a second term, or will the American people see this as a political hit job against their president?

The language is of upholding the Constitution, but don't be gulled. In that location is raw political calculation too.

What exactly is Mr Trump accused of?

He is alleged to have committed "loftier crimes and misdemeanours" (a phrase from the US Constitution) on ii counts outlined by Mr Nadler:

  • The first allegation is that he exercised the powers of his public function to "obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest", by allegedly putting pressure on Ukraine to interfere in the 2022 presidential election
  • The second allegation is that "when he was caught, when the Business firm investigated and opened an impeachment inquiry, President Trump engaged in unprecedented categorical and indiscriminate defiance of the impeachment inquiry", thereby obstructing Congress

Mr Trump "sees himself as above the law", Mr Nadler said. "We must be clear, no-one, not even the president, is in a higher place the law."

In the July telephone call to Ukraine's leader, Mr Trump appeared to tie US military assistance for Ukraine to its launching of investigations that could help him politically.

In return for those investigations, Democrats say Mr Trump offered two bargaining fries - $400m (£304m) of military assistance that had already been allocated past Congress, and a White House coming together for President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Democrats say this force per unit area on a vulnerable US marry constitutes an corruption of ability.

The starting time investigation Mr Trump wanted from Ukraine was into quondam Vice-President Joe Biden, his principal Democratic challenger, and his son Hunter. Hunter Biden joined the board of a Ukrainian energy company when his begetter was President Barack Obama's deputy.

The second Trump demand was that Ukraine should try to corroborate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the last United states presidential ballot. This theory has been widely debunked, and The states intelligence agencies are unanimous in maxim Moscow was behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails in 2016.

How strong is the example for impeachment?

President Trump railed at the declaration of the charges, declaring again on Twitter that information technology was a "witch hunt".

"Nadler simply said that I 'pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2022 Ballot'," he wrote.

"Ridiculous, and he knows that is non truthful. Both the President & Foreign Government minister of Ukraine said, many times, that at that place "WAS NO PRESSURE." Nadler and the Dems know this, but turn down to acknowledge!"

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Republicans react to articles of impeachment

Constabulary professor Jonathan Turley, who testified for Mr Trump'south Republican Party before the House Judiciary Committee, told the BBC: "The problem is not with the legal footing for such impeachable offenses simply the evidentiary record.

"This record remains both incomplete and conflicted. The Democrats take insisted on impeaching by Christmas rather than build a record to support such charges. This is at present the fastest investigation with the thinnest record supporting the narrowest impeachment in modern history."

Other constitutional lawyers take roundly endorsed the impeachment process. Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School said: "Wouldn't y'all know in your gut that such a president had abused his office, betrayed the national interest and tried to corrupt the electoral process? I believe the evidentiary record shows wrongful acts on that scale here."

How much is this about politics?

Congress is certainly dissever along political party lines. The Democrats fence that Mr Trump must be stopped from continuing for re-ballot next yr, not on political grounds but because he has committed an impeachable offence.

Adam Schiff, who oversaw congressional hearings into the allegations, said that not to act against President Trump at present would mean assuasive him to "cheat ane more fourth dimension" in 2020.

"To do cypher would make ourselves complicit" in Mr Trump's actions, he said.

Nevertheless, Mr Trump's 2022 campaign director, Brad Parscale, accused the Democrats of trying to remove the Republican candidate now because they had nobody to defeat him next year.

"Americans don't hold with this rank partisanship, but Democrats are putting on this political theatre because they don't take a feasible candidate," he said.

How does impeachment work?

Impeachment is the beginning office - the charges - of a two-stage political procedure by which Congress can remove a president from office.

If the House of Representatives votes to laissez passer articles of impeachment, the Senate is forced to hold a trial.

A Senate vote requires a two-thirds majority to convict and remove the president - unlikely in this case, given that Mr Trump's party controls the bedchamber.

Merely two US presidents in history - Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson - have been impeached, simply neither was convicted.

President Richard Nixon resigned earlier he could be impeached.

Learn more most the impeachment enquiry

More on this story

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50731010?intlink_from_url=&link_location=live-reporting-story

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