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Union Army general (1829-1890)
The House of Representatives can impeach a cabinet official such as a secretary of defense by a simple majority vote in the House, and the Senate must then try the case and convict by a supermajority—...
is vanishingly rare in history: the post-Civil War case of in 1876 is the canonical example, and the House’s 2024 impeachment of reopened a long-dormant tool of whose practical outcome—Senate acquitta...
A majority of scholarly analyses and historical practice conclude that Congress can pursue impeachment proceedings against a former president and the Senate can hold a trial, but the Constitution’s si...
Across U.S. history, Senate convictions of presidents have been effectively impossible: the Constitution requires a two‑thirds vote of Senators present to convict (67 in a full 100‑seat Senate), and e...
Two distinct threads in American history answer whether the Senate can try cabinet officials who have already left office: the 1876 impeachment and trial of Secretary of War William Belknap, where the...
A president can be subject to impeachment proceedings after leaving office, but the question of whether the Constitution permits conviction and disqualification of a former president remains disputed ...
, ’s Secretary of War, was in 1876 over a long-running trader-post kickback scheme but resigned minutes before the House vote; nevertheless tried him, found a majority voting “guilty” on the articles ...
The Constitution makes removable by impeachment as “civil officers,” grants sole power to impeach by simple majority and sole power to try and convict, but requires a two‑thirds vote to convict and re...
in 1876 first resolved a threshold jurisdictional fight, deciding it could try despite his resignation by a 37–29 vote, then conducted a full trial with more than forty witnesses before concluding on ...
The Constitution’s two‑thirds convicting threshold for Senate impeachment trials was designed as a high political bar to ensure removal from office only with broad consensus, a principle and early com...
Yes: Congress has the constitutional power to impeach and to try an official even after that person has left office; historical practice and recent congressional actions show this is both legally cont...