Before former President Donald Trump took office in 2016, there were only two times when impeachment was something of a fuss in our nation. Since, impeachment has become something that we can expect to hear every news cycle, and the formerly-revered practice has been rucked through dirt to the point where it is simply tabloid garbage.
First, in 1868, President Andrew Johnson barricaded himself in his office after replacing then Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton with Ulysses S. Grant as Secretary of War ad interim. This highly politicized and unconstitutional move resulted in Johnson being impeached by the House and was one vote shy of conviction in the Senate. Again, in 1998, President Bill Clinton found himself at the center of two articles of impeachment in connection to lying under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
However, the difference between these two examples of impeachment and more recent examples of impeachment is one thing: legitimacy.
Trump was accused in 2016 by House and Senate Democrats of allegedly abusing power and soliciting foreign interference from President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the 2020 election. He was found guilty by the House but acquitted by the Senate.
A second time Trump faced impeachment was during his lame-duck period following him being voted out of office. Again, he was found guilty by the House but acquitted by the Senate concerning the charge of “incitement of insurrection.” However, this move by House Democrats to organize impeachment managers was considered controversial and unconstitutional as Trump had already been voted out of office. Further, many cite this move by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as a means to prevent the Democratic Party’s chief political rival from holding public office again. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) commented on the second Trump impeachment, saying, “I cannot think of a more petty, vindictive and gratuitous act than to impeach an already defeated president.”
Being the main target of those impeachment articles, Trump had even thought the charges against him were partisan-motivated as he said Democrats have “cheapened the impeachment process.”
Since Trump’s tenure in office, the vindictive impeachment pendulum that Democrats have set into motion has continued to swing, but now is swinging against the Democratic Party, as President Joe Biden is finding himself in his own impeachment fiasco in the House of Representatives. It’s been found he allegedly took bribes from Ukrainian and Chinese sources in exchange for influence in U.S. policy.
Some other allegations being investigated in the House are connected to a number of issues that endanger the United States’ national security, including an incriminating hard drive which Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop that indicates and details a shifty $11 million funneled to Biden and an email from a colleague to Hunter Biden about not reporting a questionable $400,000 on tax returns.
However, the nail in the coffin tying these together is an email from one of Hunter Biden’s business associates, which revealed that President Biden received 10% of a $4.8 million payment and was referenced as “the big guy” in communications.
Though only time will tell what happens to President Biden’s presidential reputation, Axios reports that 48% of voters support the Biden impeachment inquiry, and of those voters, 36% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans in the poll are supportive of the measures in the House. Regardless, Biden’s White House appears to continue to deflect any attention towards the impeachment inquiry, as Biden’s administration officials have urged the media to “ramp up its scrutiny” of the efforts of impeachment.
Regardless of the cloudiness that recent impeachments have held, they have all been made that much more cloudy due to FBI intervention. The agency has clearly chosen sides and made it distinct that they’ll give Biden a hall pass, as the intelligence agency worked to block interviews regarding corruption surrounding Biden. In comparison, the FBI continues to give Trump more grief as he’s been harassed by intelligence agencies for as long as even before taking office in 2016 and, more recently with the raid on Mar-a-Lago, looking for classified documents that Trump stole from the White House.
The present state of U.S. politics is nothing but a system full of spite and no apparent state of common sense by focusing on impeachment rather than other issues. Our nation is experiencing the worst economic decline since the Carter administration and is being strangled by inflation. We are hurting due to a national security and humanitarian crisis at our open southern border. Worst of all, we are being laughed at on the world stage for our leader’s weak grip. Politicians call for unity after every election, and it’s time for them to walk the walk while talking the talk and end the impeachment fiasco that has held our nation in a chokehold.
We elect new government officials to let go of the past and yearn eagerly toward the future, but the issues at hand keep hauling us back by focusing on impeachment.
Michael Duke, GSB ’26, is undecided from Scottsdale, Ariz.
