Impeaching President Trump
In May 2017, US President Donald Trump fired Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey on grounds that he was unfit to hold office since Americans had lost trust in him following his handling of the email probe of Hillary Clinton. At the time of his firing, James Comey was responsible for FBI’s investigation into whether members of the Trump’s campaign team were in collusion with Russia in their interference of the 2016 US presidential elections in which President Trump was declared the winner (Collison, Zeleny & Diamon, 2017).
The actions by the US president can lead to his impeachment on ground that by firing Comey he was interfering with an investigative process targeting the White House administration. In the United States an impeachment process, which gives Congress the powers of removing a president from office begins when the House of Representatives presents charges and votes on a series of impeachment articles with the objective of gaining majority vote on any of the articles. This process is followed by an oversight of political trials in the Senate by the Supreme Court chief justice. In these trials, the impeachment process succeeds if at least two thirds of the members of the Senate vote in its favor (Bazan et al, 2009).
The lawyers representing the president will engage the lawmakers in the House of Representatives and if the impeachment process succeeds and President Trump is found guilty, he will be removed immediately. The vice president will assume the role of the presidency in acting capacity. An impeachment process does not imply that a president is guilty but that the Congress has reasons to doubt his ability to execute his role as the executive in accordance with the constitution (Lichtman, 2012).
References
Bazan, E. B., Henning, A. C., & Library of Congress. (2009). Impeachment: An overview of
constitutional provisions, procedure, and practice. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.
Collison, S., Zeleny, J & Diamon, J. (2017). Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey. CNN.
Lichtman, A. J. (2012). Predicting the next president: The keys to the White House. Lanham,
Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.