AUSTIN, Texas — Something significant and rare happened on Wednesday night – for just the third time in our nation's 243-year history, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach a president.
President Donald Trump was impeached, but that doesn't mean he's no longer the president.
Being impeached just means you are formally charged with a high crime or misdemeanor. In the case of Trump, the charges are abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Like any other time someone is charged with a crime, there is a trial.
In the case of impeachment, the trial doesn't happen in a courtroom, but before the U.S. Senate. In these cases, instead of a jury of his peers, the president's jury is all 100 U.S. senators, and only they can decide whether the impeached President should be removed from office.
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The Senate has never voted to remove a President.
Still, Trump is joining a short list no president wants to be on. The only other presidents to be impeached are Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Many people are asking, what about President Richard Nixon? The U.S. House of Representatives did start the impeachment process for Nixon and even held hearings, famously known as Watergate. But Nixon resigned before the House could officially vote to impeach him.
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As the U.S. goes through this process, people are hearing the name of one of our founding fathers evoked over and over again, Alexander Hamilton, who was the author, if you will, of the impeachment process. Lawmakers on both sides are using his words from the Federalist Papers to talk over and around each other and it's the very thing he didn't want to happen.
In the Federalist Papers No. 65, Hamilton wrote, "The greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."
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