that would be 67 senators voting yes. that s getting 20 republicans to swing. 73% of the judges who were impeached went on to be removed from office. numbers are different when you look at politicians. only one out of four politicians removed through the process, a senator in the 1790s who was technically expelled in a complicated decision, a senator has never convicted a sitting president. the two who were impeached did not reach that super majority. now, that s the history. majority leader mcconnell says the senate would have to take up impeachment and hold a trial if the house does this. he s hinted that trial could be any length which he also stressed potential speed ahead of the clinton trial.
of a president in the senate? well, that s a good question. there have been so few that we really kind of have to look at history and look forward as you mentioned er mentioned earlier to the legacy that might be left to determine how best to perform i think as both senators and as the chief justice presiding. i think that primarily we are looking for a decorum that rises above partisan politics to the extent possible in order to ensure that the american people get what they deserve which is a fair look at whatever the charges that are brought by the congress in the form of an impeachment might be. and we don t know what those are at this point. i think that in addition, the chief justice is going to have to adjust to a different environment. i m not sure he s exactly relishing presiding in an
merits due process. do you think there s fairness there? would it concern you to remove any president if it was primarily on anonymous testimony? look, the constitution vests the authority to remove a president exclusively in the united states senate. and other than that, it does not spell out any specific guarantees of due process or some amorphous notion of fairness, although we do know that it is a fair process and procedure. it s a political process by nature. that argument does not work, and it will not work. no. the country really deserves a full airing of all of the charges that may be brought, whatever they might be and wherever they might lead. and we have reposed in our representatives the solemn responsibility to rise above politics to the extent possible and to do what they must do, what they ve taken an oath to do and uphold the constitution.
about this effort. but especially not nullifying the election over personal behavior. that s what this was about. this was about personal behavior, abhorrent as it was. but that s vastly different than behavior in which a president is asking a foreign government to intervene and to involve themselves in an election here in this country. that, by the way, is criminal. so, there s a lot of evidence that some really bad things have been happening and have happened, and i think this senate will have to deal with those questions. and they are not questions about personal behavior. judge lewis, a question i ve been waiting to ask all week since i had the opportunity to interview the president s lawyer this week. he has taken the position that it would be unfair to try to convict the president on anonymous testimony, people who cannot be confronted. we all know, most people, know the rules are different, there s no constitutional about what
original nadler statement and what we heard from chairman schiff. and schiff queues in on the most important part of the process in the committee. that is that the president has had no substantive answer to this narrative of wrong doing by the president and those close to him and also schiff was able to lay it at the president s doorstep. so, that s the legal part of this process. now we know that chairman nadler and the judiciary committee will open with at least one day of hearings designed to lay out the legal contours. what do high crimes and misdemeanors mean? what is an abuse of trust that warrants impeachment of a president? i expect they ll dip back to wisdom of the founding father, give the country an overview of the law so we can understand what the legal analysis looks like that we bring and that we fold those facts into. maya? i agree. and i think one of the things that s going to be so important with this one day that we know so far, we never know what else