President Donald Trump was acquitted of his two impeachment charges during a Senate vote that was nearly uniform among party lines. On Feb. 5, 2020, history was made in more ways than one.
The impeachment inquiry was a road filled with key players, major events and implications that could affect students of Colorado Mesa University (CMU) in a big way. Explained for CMU by CMU, the inquiry was filled with things to break down.
What is impeachment?
Impeachment is a way to keep government figures such as presidents, cabinet members and judges in check; it’s the act of bringing charges against an official. Impeachment alone is not enough to remove one from office. To be impeached, an offense such as treason, bribery and other high crimes must be charged (United States Senate).
The trial could have led to Trump being removed from office. This is rare because out of the three U.S. presidents who have been impeached (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and now Trump), none have ever been officially taken out of office (Business Insider).
The charges
Trump was accused of two offenses:
Article 1: Abuse of Power
There is a cornucopia of evidence that Trump – with the help of Rudy Giuliani, his private lawyer – delayed a visit to the White House from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with withholding over $390 million of military support to the country until Ukraine announced an investigation on the Bidens, including Joe Biden, a major Democratic presidential candidate (The Washington Post).
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress
“I think we spend a lot of time looking at the Ukraine, but I think the obstruction of justice is more interesting,” said Dr. Tim Casey, a professor of political science at Colorado Mesa University (CMU).
Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, wrote in a series of letters in October 2019 that the president would essentially not cooperate with Congress’s investigation. The President was also accused of being in defiance of subpoenas (USA Today).
“The point is that the House is playing a longer game. They’re looking at what will be the historical legacy of this time period, because people will be talking about this time period in the future, and they will be assessing whether the constitution is upheld or not. I think that’s part of the issue,” Casey said.
What does CMU think?
“I do think that students should pay attention to the impeachment trial, and politics in general because they eventually will have to vote and they also have the right to have a say in what is going on in the country,” CMU student Sami Stewart said.
“I also think the trial was done in an unfair way, not calling key witnesses and getting the trial done in as little time as possible. There are two sides to every argument and I can see where Republican majority leaders are coming from but I think they should have called the witnesses to the stand regardless of political view,” CMU student Gabe Simon said.
How close was it?
To win a conviction on either charge, Democrats would have needed 67 votes. Voting was almost entirely along party lines.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah became the only senator in history to vote to remove a president of their own party. He has since faced considerable backlash from members of his own party, with some suggesting he has lost credibility and should be thrown out of the party, while others have shrugged off his decision (Fox News).
CMU Professor of Political Science Dr. Justin Gollob had honed in on what he thought the outcome of the trial would be.
“President Trump will be acquitted. Some senators will likely engage in verbal gymnastics to both criticize the president while also voting to acquit. However, this is a partisan issue – rightly, or no – and it will be a partisan vote,” Gollob said at the time.
Why even impeach in the first place?
Casey also brought up why the House elected to pursue the trial, even if odds were slim.
“[If the obstruction went uncharged] . . . Congress will lose a ton of power relative to the president, in the future. Any future president will be able to do the same thing, and just ignore whenever they don’t like or don’t agree with Congress about whether Congress should be looking into something. So that I think is what the House sees as the biggest issue right now,” Casey said, before the acquittal occured.
“I think it does go back to sort of the abuse of power and the check on government [. . .] our entire political process is set up by what’s known as the limited notion of government [. . .] and it’s that government in a democratic system is bound by the rules and the law that government has to operate under. It can’t just do whatever it wants to do, and if the government could do whatever it wants to do, then there’s no guarantees of everything that the students of CMU would have in the future,” Casey said.
What happens now?
Being acquitted means that President Trump will not be removed from office, but that doesn’t change the fact that some people think that the President remains guilty. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, thinks so.
“Sadly, because of the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution, the president remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to,” Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said in an NPR interview.
While parts of America mourned this moment and other parts cheered, there is no doubt about the historical significance of this event.
“Only three times in history have Americans been witness to a presidential impeachment trial. Regardless of students’ level of interest in politics, I would think that a unique moment such as this would be worthy of their attention,” Gollob said.
Fast Facts
