How to dismantle the argument that Donald Trump hasn’t actually been impeached yet
This week, one legal expert got a lot of attention by arguing that because the House hasn’t actually delivered the articles of impeachment to the Senate yet, it means Donald Trump hasn’t actually been impeached yet. Most legal experts disagree. But when one expert says something controversial and unnerving, that’s the pundit who gets all the media attention, while the others are ignored. It’s similar to when an outlier poll delivers some absurd result, and the media latches onto it while pretending that all the polls with plausible numbers don’t exist.
The trouble, of course, is that Donald Trump and his supporters have latched onto the claim that Trump hasn’t actually been impeached. It’s not that anyone outside Trump’s base is going to believe this, or that Trump is somehow going to gain a single additional vote in 2020 because of this. In fact it’s a classic example of a base latching onto a talking point that doesn’t impress anyone outside the base, and then the base ending up confused about why the talking point didn’t put their candidate over the top in the election.
Still, this particular talking point is particularly annoying. You might even hear it repeated by your conservative relatives over the holidays. If you do want to shoot it down, I’ll make it easy for you. The Constitution only says a few words about impeachment to begin with, and because there have been so few impeachments over the years, very little legal precedent has been established via court battles. But most legal experts agree that the House impeachment hearings are the legal equivalent of a grand jury, while the Senate impeachment trial is the legal equivalent of a criminal trial.
During grand jury proceedings (in this case in the House), a defendant does not get to call witnesses or have representation; it’s entirely about prosecutors convincing a grand jury that there’s enough evidence to indict the defendant. Then, during the criminal trial (in this case in the Senate), the defendant gets to put on a defense.
Prosecutors have various valid reasons for having a grand jury indict a defendant, but then holding off on issuing the indictment – so they keep the indictment under seal until the appropriate time. In such case, the person very much has been indicted, even while it’s still under seal. We have the same thing in impeachment. Even though the House is essentially keeping the articles of impeachment under seal for now, Donald Trump has been impeached. You don’t need to be a legal expert to understand this concept.
