The Constitution is clear, the house votes to impeach, the Senate votes to convict and needs a supermajority.
Nixon resigned because it was a done deal that he would be convicted. Trump remained and his party did a little jury nullification and voted not guilty regardless of the evidence.
The SC didn’t need to do anything to stop impeachment (and doesn’t have the legal authority to do anything about it regardless)
d00phy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
AFAIK, the only involvement SCOTUS has in a presidential impeachment is the chief justice presides over the hearing in the Senate. That’s the procedure that would remove the president from office.
skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Double checked to make sure I wasn’t making a fool of myself, and yeah, you’re actually completely correct.
Chief Justice presides over the hearing and the Senate votes on it. The House of Representatives is who presents articles of impeachment and if they reach a simple majority, then bam, you’re impeached right then and there. But a successful impeachment then goes to Senate to vote whether the official in question is guilty and should be removed from office.
Interestingly, according to this gov page I’m pulling the info from (which may or may not be accurate anymore these days, who knows) a total of 21 successful impeachments have been run in American history. Of those impeached, only 8 officials have been found guilty by the Senate and removed from office. All 8 of them were federal judges. 3 presidents have been impeached, but none were removed from office - Nixon isn’t on this list because he resigned and ran away once the impeachment process began but before it could finish. DJT is the only president in American history to manage to be impeached twice.
Anyway, point being, if the president has either the Senate or the Supreme Court Chief Justice in his pockets, he’s effectively immune to impeachment. With both in his pockets he’s so immune to it that it becomes a joke to him. You can impeach him as many times as you want all day long until the cows come home, but if no one in the Senate ever votes to convict then it means nothing more than a nasty footnote on his page in the history books. Or more likely these days it means you’ll be picked up off the streets by the Gestapo and the impeachment will be conveniently left out of historical records.