INDIANAPOLIS — If the goal is to remove President Donald Trump from office before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20, time is not on Congress’s side.
“Impeachment is not a process designed for a quick and speedy removal from office. That’s why the 25th Amendment exists,” University of Indianapolis history professor Ted Frantz said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office, saying if they don’t, Congress was prepared to move forward with impeachment.
Frantz said the Judiciary Committee could still draw up articles of impeachment against the president, giving the House a chance to vote on them. If a majority in the House voted to impeach President Trump, it wouldn't necessarily spell his removal from office.
“That would still be a statement of basically shame and disapproval, but in order for him to be removed from power, then there would still be a trial in the Senate,” Frantz explained.
The last time that happened to this president and President Bill Clinton before him, the Senate trial took time, longer than the time Trump still has in office.
“What we’ve seen in the past is that it’s never been a quicker affair than two weeks in modern history,” Frantz explained of a Senate trial, saying the framers of the Constitution planned it that way.
“I know to everybody right now, there is a real desire to act incredibly quickly, but this process of impeachment was not designed to function in that way,” Frantz said.
That doesn’t mean the last 13 days of Trump’s time in office won’t someday end up being one of the most talked about moments in history books. If the House does vote to impeach him, again, as it stands now, Trump would be the only American president to be impeached twice.