We sit as a jury of 100 to render impartial justice with the chief justice is the Supreme Court presiding as the chief judge. I will administer the oath. To all senators in the chamber in conformance with article one, section three, clause six of the constitution and the Senate Impeachment rule. To be sure no vote would be parted, you take a vote three times to render impartial justice. One as group, then as individual, and the third, you go into the well and you sign the book where i hereby, u. S. Senator from maryland, pledged to render impartial justice in the matter of impeachment. Wow. Your hand shakes with that kind of historical amendment. Host don ritchie, u. S. Senate historian emeritus, we have asked you to spend an hour with us to give us some perspective, to guide us what might happen. Senator mccluskey talks about how important this felt, the job the u. S. Senators were doing. As a whole, as the process gets underway, how should the public think about impeachment . Is it a judicial process, a legal process, a political process . Put it in the largest context. Mr. Ritchie it is all three. It is really a judicial process spelled out very specifically in the constitution as to what the role of the senate and house are in the process. A little more vague is what the charges could be. Also the penalty of being , removed by office by a two thirds vote in the senate. And the senate is a political body and absolutely everything in the senate and congress has dimensions to it. Has some political dimensions to it. The taking the oath and the signing of the book is to remind the senators that it is not everyday politics. It is something different, something a little higher. And certainly having the chief justice presiding on the senate adds a certain degree of gravity. Host what level of federal officials can be subject to impeachment . Mr. Ritchie any level. There is question about if a legislator could be impeached but the house impeached a u. S. Senator in the 1790s but the senate had already expelled them and some thought it was good to hold the trial. It was moot to hold the trial. His lawyers argued because he was a southerner, he was exempt. There is no unnecessary precedent on that. On the other hand both houses of , congress can expel a member by a two thirds vote. Host if you look back at the countrys history, impeachment has been explored in the public sphere for 15 out of the 45 president s. Only three of them have been impeached. Richard nixon resigned. What should the lessons be from those numbers . Mr. Ritchie during the clinton impeachment, senator byrd described impeachment as a damocles that holds over each president. Each president needs to know they are not above the law. Every officer of the government needs to know that that there is a constitutional amendment for removing them from office. Even a federal judge with a lifetime appointment can be removed, and certainly the president of the United States, if they have committed a crime that convinces the majority of the house and two thirds of the senate they are guilty. Host we will look back in history because precedent guides us so much. Give us a quick primer on the three president ial impeachments. We will use a video from the first one from a cspan special on the congress. It is the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Lets watch a little bit of that. [video clip] the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson was an absolute sensation. It was for that trial that they first issued gallery tickets for the Senate Chamber. This was the first really public trial that took place. If you look at publications of the day, they are full of wonderful illustrations. Delivering articles of the impeachment into johnsons hand. All of the lawyers lining up into the chamber to make their cases pro and con in the impeachment. It is really just this Society Event of 1868. He has gone against congress and reconstruction policy. They had considered impeachment over and over again and finally in 1868, he did something that gave them an excuse for impeachment. He fired someone without gaining permission to do so from congress. Host that was the voice of betty cohen, the Current Senate historian. What should we know about the johnson impeachment . The Republican House and senate, democratic president. 11 articles of impeachment. What else should we know . Mr. Ritchie johnson was elected in 1864 on a ticket with abraham lincoln. He was one of the only southern senators that did not secede with his state. He was a democrat. Lincoln had a unity party in 1864 and brought him on the ticket. When lincoln was assassinated and johnson became president , the republicans in congress thought they would be their ally. Because they thought he would support them in terms of reconstruction. But he disillusioned them. He vetoed lots of legislation it did not seem concerned about the former slaves of the south. He put himself up as an obstacle to the reconstruction of the south. That went on from 1865 until early 1868. Even though his term was coming to an end that year, the House Republicans rose up and impeached him. They impeached him first and then they went back and drew up the articles of impeachment as to why they were impeaching him. They thought they had a good chance to have him removed in the senate, because more than two thirds of the senators were republicans. The Republican Party was divided between this radical and moderate wings but essentially johnson had united them because they were all so offended by his policies. It went into the senate. Seven republican senators could not bring themselves to vote to remove him. I think the general sense was that his term was coming to an end and if you give him enough rope, he will hang himself and if you remove him, you will have weakened the presidency and the president will also be dependent on a majority in the senate. Will always be depended on my majority in the senate. A bit the way prime ministers in parliament are dependent on having a majority in congress. The independence of the presidency was threatened. So johnson was saved from removal by one single vote in the senate. Host it took until 1974 for the next series impeachment effort against richard nixon. The House Judiciary Committee voted out three articles of impeachment. The president then resigned. What else should we know . Mr. Ritchie i was a graduate student in washington at the time and watergate was fascinating. I remember going to hear john dean testify on the Watergate Committee and i sat on the House Judiciary Committee. I sat in on the House Judiciary Committee. There was a great sense of solemnity to this. This was a serious issue. Serious investigation was underway. Two Political Parties were different at that stage. The republicans and democrats had liberal and conservative wings. Nixon had a lot of opposition from moderate republicans and from liberal republicans and got support from conservative democrats. So it was unclear what his status would be. As the house was voting, the Judiciary Committee is considering voting, the Supreme Court ruled and said the nixon tapes had to be opened. One of the tapes made it pretty clear to anyone who listened that nixon was part of the coverup to hide the crime committed. So it was not so much the crime committed, the breaking into the democratic conference headquarters, but the fact that the president had authorized pushing money to burglars and done Everything Possible to obstruct justice after that. So even some of his strongest supporters in the house backed away and said they would support impeachment. Eventually, a group of senators went up to the white house with the republican candidate from 1964, barry goldwater, and he advised nixon he did not have the votes in the u. S. Senate to sustain himself in an impeachment trial. So the president chose to resign rather than face trial. Senate did not know he would resign. They had spent time writing rules and getting ready to hold a serious impeachment trial. Host so it was 25 years later, 1999, bill clinton faced impeachment. Republican house and senate, democratic president. The house voted out perjury and obstruction of justice and the trial began early january, just like now. What else should we know . Mr. Ritchie it happened at the end of congress and the house of representatives, House Republicans had lost votes in that election. It was not clear what they were about to do. They did not have a big investigation. They depended on the report that was done by Kenneth Starr into the clinton issue. It was thrust on the senate. I remember there was a feeling in the senate, People Holding their breath, hoping it would not come. We in the Historical Office had been doing a lot of research and got the word from on high that it would be better not to make any public statements about this. I think pretty much everybody in the leadership positions of the offices of the senate got the same message. We were waiting to see, hope against hope that the house would not do this. And they did. When they got ready to send the articles of impeachment to the senate, the said it was already adjourned. There was no one there so no one could receive the proceedings. They begin the trial in january but it took them a long time to decide had to go about doing it. How to go about doing it. They would back and looked at rules from 1868 and dug out the rules that had been devised in 1974 when they thought they would hold the trial for nixon. I had done an oral history with floyd riddick, a proletarian of the senate, who spent a lot of the parliamentarian of the senate, who spent a lot of time talking about how they would have held nixons trial. They even put cameras in the galleries because they felt they could not hold an impeachment trial if the public did not have an opportunity to watch. Then there were three judges of the 1980s who were impeached. So rules had been revised and brought up to date. So this was still a unique situation with president ial impeachment and they were going to have to meet first before going into public session, the senators would have to be privately to work out the roles. Host this is the first of the president ial impeachment before a divided congress. What is the import . Mr. Ritchie politics is always a part in this. Even though senators take a vote to be impartial, they cannot take an oath to be impartial they cannot forget their party , or who the president is and which party he belongs to. There is definitely going to be a lot of support among senators for the president of their own party and opposition from the other party. The house managers have to convince people that this is a critical act, not a political this is a criminal act not a , political act, and that it rises to the level of what the constitution defines as an impeachable offense. That has been true regardless of which party controlled which house. In 1999, the republican and Democratic Leaders worked together remarkably well. They wanted the senate to look good and to look more substantial than the house had in its actions and they worked together and there was a lot more bipartisanship than i think anyone thought possible. That unique bipartisan conference in the Old Senate Chamber produced agreement and they voted 1000 on the senate rules. As senator kennedy and senator bill graham of texas concluded, phil graham of texas concluded, they did not have enough agreement to get to home plate but they had enough to get to second base. So they would write the rules to get to second base and once they got there, we would write the they would write the rules to go home. Host in 2020, unlike 1974 and 1999, this is an election year. What does that do to the process . Mr. Ritchie in each of the previous cases, they were in their second terms. Nixon and clinton were constitutionally unable to run for a third term. So it was not going to affect their elections. It might affect the Vice President s and what might happen to them, that this was the first time we have had an impeachment of a president serving in his first term and who is a possible candidate for reelection. We do not know how the public will react. President clinton in 1999 saw his popularity go up. The public thought he was being unfairly treated and he actually came out of impeachment with a better standing in the polls than before. It is not clear if that would work again, but you cannot count in advance with the public reaction will be. Host we will let the constitution guide the rest of our conversation, starting with the most broad designation of power of the two bodies by the constitution. Lets look at what the constitution rights. Article one, section two, the house of representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment. The senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. What was the thinking of the founders that the impeachment stays in the peoples body . Mr. Ritchie the house initially was the only part again that was elected by the people. The president was elected by the electoral college. Still is. Senators were elected by state legislator in those days. So there is the sense the peoples body should decide whether or not someone should be impeached. Impeachment is a form of indictment. Like a grand jury. Then they would go to the senate to hold the trial. But the constitution specifies senators must vote two thirds to remove someone from office. The constitution uses two thirds on a number of occasions to ratify treaties and overturning vetoes. They wanted super majorities in certain cases so it was not strictly a oneparty action. You had to prove your case. You had to convince enough senators to get on board. So that meant you had different requirements, different standards in the house and senate. In the last 200 years, the partyline vote in the house has never produced a bipartisan vote. If there is a partyline vote in the house there will likely be a partyline vote in the senate. The exception is when we have had judges that were overwhelmingly condemned in the house by more than two thirds of the house members. When it came to the senate, they heard evidence and a large enough to thirds majority of senators voted to remove the judges from office. So the numbers are different in the house and senate, but there is an impact. Host we saw how broad the the language is in the constitution. Since the house voted in late december to impeach the president , there has been a standoff between the two bodies. Speaker pelosi and mitch mcconnell. What leverage does each body have over the other . Mr. Ritchie senator mcconnell basically said they have no leverage and the senate never felt the house had leverage. The house regularly passes bills that never go anywhere in the senate. They are in a position to frustrate each other. There are instances where the house is perturbed about the senate but there is nothing they can do. Right now, we are in a Twilight Zone in between and that is partly because the constitution is more specific about impeachment than it is about most things but it does not say everything. It leaves questions as to when will the articles of impeachment be presented, to whom, how. In the past, it has gone pretty quickly. With clinton, it went so quickly the senate was not even in session when articles were said. This is something for the leaders of the houses to wrangle with each other about. Im not sure i would use the word leverage, but i think it is a tactic that the speaker is using in this case. In one way, it stopped a very quick trial from being held in december, which was what was intimated by the senate at one point. So perhaps the tactic is to stretch proceedings. There are certainly things the house managers want to be able to do and they want the rules of the Senate Proceedings to satisfy them. In 1999, the house managers assumed because republicans were the majority in the senate, they were naturally write the rules to favor them, and they didnt. They were very fair and impartial rules. House managers were furious and talked about having to climb up Mount Olympus to get to the senate because the senate was treating itself more loosely. Ly. Aloof host since the current wrangling is over rules and you told us in 1999 it was the same process, we have another video clip. This is two former senators in office during the clinton impeachment. They talk about the wrangling. Lets listen. [video clip] these important meetings that rick and i had, in the Old Senate Chamber, no staff or family. Just 100 of us in the room. Several days before the trial began in the senate. We decided we were on trial. We needed to conduct ourselves well. The world was watching how we do this. Not to mention the american i feel very proud of the fact that we found a middle ground. Not everything the house wanted in a trial or everything the Democratic Base wanted, to just not give any recognition of the house, vote it down. People say it is so contentious now. It was contentious then. But leaders were able to lead and get their caucus to go along. Host we are hearing this time it might be a partyline vote. What is the difference. Mr. Ritchie there was a great sense of relief when the senate voted and the senators came up unanimously with a set of rules. They returned the dignity of the senate. The appearance of what they were doing. If you voted the party voted to , if you vote on a party line it reminds people it is a partisan institution. Senator byrd was the most concerned of any senator about the image of the u. S. Senate. He spoke at the beginning of the closed door session in the Old Senate Chamber about why impeachment was so important and serious and why senators had to read the oath they had taken about being impartial and take it seriously. He gave an impassioned speech at the beginning of the session. It helped. Senators cited that is helping them reach agreement. Senator byrd issued a motion to