House to impeach Trump next week: Takeaways as vote and Senate trial looms

WASHINGTON - Sometime next week, President Donald Trump will become — with only Democratic votes — the third sitting president in the history of the nation to be impeached. The next step will be a January trial in the Senate. Here are some takeaways:

Impeachment managers

The prosecutors in the Senate are called House managers. They will be selected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The U.S. Constitution is silent on the number of managers.

There were 13 House managers for President Bill Clinton’s 1999 Senate trial, led by House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who died in 2007.

There were eight House managers for President Andrew Johnson’s 1868 Senate trial, including an Illinois Representative, John Logan, who went on to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois. He died in 1886 in Washington. Logan Circle in Washington is named for him.

Johnson and Clinton were not convicted in their Senate trials.

Who Pelosi will pick as House managers is the subject of much speculation. A senior Democratic aide told me Friday, “the Speaker is keeping her views very close to the vest on this. However, she has mentioned her desire to have diversity, including geographic diversity, in her managers.” All previous presidential impeachment House managers have been men.

GOP’s ‘coastal elite’ issue

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, lands in the mix to be considered an impeachment manager because of Pelosi’s desire for diversity, coming as the GOP attacks Democrats as “coastal elites” — a charge made because Pelosi and other powerful top Democrats are from California or New York.

At the Wednesday House Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican members put up on their side of the room a picture of the Democratic leaders and the words, “coastal impeachment squad.”

Krishnamoorthi, whose 8^th Congressional District sweeps in northwest suburban Chicago turf, is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. That’s the panel that investigated Trump and held public hearings with witnesses on his efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. The 300-page Intelligence Committee report is the backbone supporting the two articles of impeachment against Trump the House Judiciary Committee approved on Friday.

Krishnamoorthi checks off several of Pelosi’s diversity boxes. He is an Indian-American. He represents a Midwest district. He is an attorney, a Harvard Law graduate. He is one of four Hindus in Congress.

TRUMP WORD SCRAMBLE:

When Trump reacted Friday to the Judiciary panel’s historic vote sending his impeachment to the House floor, he repeated his criticisms: “It’s a witch hunt. It’s a sham. It’s a hoax. Nothing was done wrong. Zero was done wrong.”

Then, he added: “I think it’s a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment, which is supposed to be used in an emergency.”

He added, “And it would seem many, many, many years apart.”

My comments: The word emergency — or a similar word — does not appear in the sections of the Constitution dealing with impeachment. The framers were silent on how often impeachment was to be used.

The Constitution does not suggest that presidential impeachments need to be years apart. It’s just how things have worked out. Johnson’s Senate trial in 1868 seemed ancient history by the time of Clinton’s 1999 trial. Trump’s trial will be “just” 21 years later.

Since the founding of the U.S., the Senate has conducted 19 impeachment trials, so it is true they are rare. But that is dictated by circumstances. To date, the Senate has held impeachment trials for two presidents; one secretary of war; one justice; and the rest, federal judges.

The last Senate impeachment trial ended Dec. 8, 2010, when Louisiana U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Porteous was found guilty and removed from office.

Trump also said Friday: “So the impeachment is a hoax. It’s a sham. It started a long time ago, probably before I came down the escalator with the future First Lady. It started a long time ago.”

My comment: Do I have to say this? Trump is making up stuff, saying a move to impeach him happened before he rode down a Trump Tower escalator to announce his presidential bid on June 16, 2015.