Impeachment standard ‘a high bar’ says Rob McKenna

Former Attorney General Rob McKenna joined KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross to discuss impeachment, a complex issue that’s been floating around Donald Trump ever since he became president.

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“Impeachment is like an indictment,” McKenna said. “There’s a second stage in that process in which there’s a trial conducted by the Senate and then only if you’re convicted are you removed from office.”

Basically, being impeached doesn’t necessarily lead to being expelled from your political post. What triggers impeachment is not simply the fact that something unlawful occurred, McKenna explained.

“It’s also whether the offense was serious enough to warrant removal. And you only get to take one vote. Your vote is on whether you think the person is guilty, and whether you believe the fact they’re guilty warrants their removal from office,” he said.

“It’s a high bar. And not only because of that two-step analysis, but because you need two-thirds of the U.S. Senate voting to convict in order to remove from office, whereas you need just a majority of the House of Representatives to adopt articles of impeachment.”

In reality, impeachment is a political process, McKenna said.

“It represents a fundamental check on the power of another branch. It’s a check on the power of the judiciary because we have these lifetime appointments to the federal court and yet we know sometimes someone really needs to leave the bench,” he said.

“Then you have the check that this represents on the power of the president. You need to be able to remove a president who is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, although that’s not really defined anywhere. And then third, senators themselves can be impeached.”

Two U.S. presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.

The process doesn’t pertain only to presidents.

“It applies to vice presidents, cabinet secretaries, supreme court justices, federal judges, and this broad category of civil officers,” McKenna said.

“All of the examples historically of people who have actually been removed from office are examples involving judges. Lots of people have been impeached throughout history, but have not been convicted and have therefore not been removed from office.”

The first person ever to be impeached and removed from office was Judge John Pickering. He was convicted of drunkenness and “unlawful rulings” in 1803.

“There were three federal judges impeached and convicted and then removed from office back in the 1980s. But before that, the last one who was actually impeached and removed from office was in 1936 — a judge from the Southern District of Florida,” McKenna said. “So I imagine they’d have to dust off a lot of old books in order to get ready to conduct one of these trials.”