Will Presidential Impeachment Become New Normal?
24th February 2021
When the House impeached Donald Trump in late 2019 on ambiguous charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, many legal experts expressed concern about normalizing impeachment–previously a very rare procedure.
“Abuse of Power: Inside the Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump,” my 2020 book, outlines how Trump was the first president impeached on noncriminal allegations. Unlike the charges in the first impeachment, federal statutes cover both incitement and insurrection–the basis of the charge in the House’s second impeachment of Trump.
Nevertheless, the second impeachment, just more than a year later, may have exacerbated such concerns of making impeachment a routine process.