How Impeachment Works, Step by Step, From the House Floor to the Senate Trial

Quick quiz. Does impeachment remove a president from office? Most people say yes. Most people are wrong. Impeachment is the accusation. It is the grand jury indictment, if you like, and nothing more. The removal comes only after a second, separate act, and in the entire history of the United States that second act has never happened to a president. Three have been impeached. None has been convicted. One resigned with the House vote coming.

I find it remarkable that a procedure written into the Constitution, one that has dominated the headlines for decades, is understood by so few of the people who argue about it at dinner. So let me lay out the machinery, piece by piece, in the order it runs. No spin from either direction. Just the gears.

The text: three places to look

The whole thing sits in three short passages, and you can read them in about two minutes on the National Archives website.

1. Article I, Section 2. The House of Representatives has the sole power of impeachment. "Sole" matters. No court, no president, no Senate can start the process or stop it.
2. Article I, Section 3. The Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. Senators sit on oath or affirmation. When the President is tried, the Chief Justice presides. And no person can be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present. The same section limits the penalty: removal from office and disqualification from holding future office, and nothing else. A convicted official can still be indicted and tried in an ordinary court afterward.
3. Article II, Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Notice the structure. One chamber accuses, the other judges. That split was no accident. It means no single body can both charge and convict, which is the same instinct behind the grand jury and the trial jury. It is separation of powers applied to the most dangerous power a legislature has.

What counts as "high crimes and misdemeanors"

This is the question everyone fights about. The text names treason and bribery, which are clear, then adds "other high crimes and misdemeanors," which is not.

The history is useful. At the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, George Mason proposed adding "maladministration" as a ground. James Madison objected that the word was so vague it would let the Senate hold a President at its pleasure. Mason withdrew it and offered "other high crimes and misdemeanors" instead, a phrase with a long English pedigree in parliamentary impeachments. The delegates adopted it.

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 65, described the offenses as those that proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust, and he called them political in nature, because they relate chiefly to injuries done to society itself. Notice the word. The founders did not pretend this was a pure criminal trial. They built a political check with legal forms.

So there are two reasonable schools of thought. One says the phrase covers serious abuses of power even if no statute is broken. The other says it should be read narrowly, close to ordinary crimes. I'll tell you which side I find more persuasive in a moment. First, the steps.

The steps, in order

Here is how an impeachment actually moves through Congress. Treat this as a walkthrough of the typical path. The House sets many of its own procedures, so details vary from case to case.

1. A resolution is introduced. Any member of the House can introduce a resolution calling for impeachment. Most go nowhere. They are referred to the Judiciary Committee and die there.
2. The committee investigates. If the majority wants to proceed, the Judiciary Committee, or another committee the House designates, gathers evidence, holds hearings and drafts articles of impeachment. The articles are the formal charges.
3. The committee votes. A majority of the committee must approve the articles before they reach the floor. In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee approved articles against Richard Nixon in late July.
4. The House votes. The full House debates and votes on each article. It takes a simple majority of members voting, with a quorum present. That is the low bar. It is why an impeachment can happen on a party-line vote.
5. Managers are appointed. The House selects members, called managers, to act as prosecutors before the Senate.
6. The Senate holds a trial. Senators are the jury. The Senate adopts its own rules of procedure and decides how to handle witnesses and evidence. For a President, the Chief Justice presides. The President is represented by his own counsel.
7. The Senate votes on each article. Conviction on any one article requires two-thirds of the senators present. If all 100 are present, two-thirds of 100 is 66.67, and since senators cannot be divided, 67 votes are needed.
8. The consequences. On conviction the person is removed. Under Senate precedent the Senate may then vote, by a simple majority, on disqualification from future office. On acquittal, nothing happens, and the official stays.

That two-thirds threshold is the most important number in the whole process. It means conviction has to be bipartisan, almost by design, unless one party holds a supermajority.

Three presidents, four case studies

Let me run the record, because history answers most of the abstract arguments.

Andrew Johnson, 1868. Johnson, a Democrat who had been Lincoln's Vice President, clashed with the Republican Congress over Reconstruction. The Tenure of Office Act of 1867 barred him from removing certain officials without Senate approval. When he tried to fire the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the House impeached him in February 1868. The Senate trial was presided over by Chief Justice Salmon Chase. On the key articles the vote to convict was 35 to 19, which was one vote short of the 36 needed with all 54 senators voting. A single vote. Seven Republican senators broke from their party to acquit, and some of them paid politically for it. The full story is in Johnson's Vetoes, the Overrides and the Impeachment That Fell One Vote Short.

Richard Nixon, 1974. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment between July 27 and 30, 1974. The full House never voted on them. After the tape of June 23, 1972 came out, Republican leaders told Nixon he would lose, and he resigned on August 9. This is the only time the threat of the process, working with the courts, drove a president from office. See United States v. Nixon and What the Court Really Said About Executive Privilege for the Supreme Court's role.

Bill Clinton, 1998 and 1999. The House impeached him on December 19, 1998, on two articles, perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice. The Senate trial was presided over by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. On February 12, 1999 the Senate voted 45 to 55 on perjury and 50 to 50 on obstruction. Both were far short of 67.

Donald Trump, 2019 and 2021. The House impeached him on December 18, 2019, and the Senate acquitted him on February 5, 2020. The House impeached him a second time on January 13, 2021, and the Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict on February 13, 2021, ten short of two-thirds. In the second trial he had already left office, and the Chief Justice did not preside.

Put the cases side by side and a pattern leaps out. Every presidential trial has produced an acquittal, and in each case the vote followed the party map far more closely than the evidence. Two-thirds is a mountain, and no president's own party has ever handed over enough votes to climb it. Whatever you think of a given case, that is a feature of the design. The framers wanted removal to be rare.

The judges' version: Samuel Chase and Walter Nixon

Presidents are only part of the story. The other officers subject to impeachment include federal judges, and two cases from that side teach a lot.

In 1804 the House impeached Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, a Federalist whose partisan behavior on the bench enraged Thomas Jefferson's party. In March 1805 the Senate acquitted him, with no article reaching two-thirds. The precedent that stuck was that a judge should not be removed simply for decisions or opinions one party dislikes. That principle protects judicial independence to this day, and conservatives who are tempted to wave the impeachment flag at a judge who rules against them should remember who it protects when the shoe is on the other foot.

In 1993 the Court decided Nixon v. United States. This Nixon was Walter Nixon, a federal judge in Mississippi who had been convicted of lying to a grand jury, kept his salary while in prison, and was impeached by the House. The Senate, under its own rules, had a committee take the evidence and then voted by the full body. Judge Nixon argued that the Constitution's word "try" required the whole Senate to hear the evidence. The Court held that the question was a political one for the Senate alone to decide. Courts stay out. That is consistent with the text: "sole power" means sole.

What impeachment does not do

Three limits are worth knowing, because they surprise people.

First, impeachment is not a criminal trial, so no one goes to jail because of it. The only penalties are removal and disqualification. Second, the President's pardon power, which is broad, has an exception written into Article II, Section 2: it reaches offenses against the United States "except in Cases of Impeachment." A President cannot pardon someone out of an impeachment conviction. For the rest of that power, see Pardon Power Questions Answered, From Washington to Ex parte Garland. Third, an impeached official who is acquitted stands exactly where he stood before. There is no appeal, no retrial and no second bite on the same article.

There is also a footnote from the very first case. In 1797 the House impeached Senator William Blount of Tennessee for scheming to help Britain seize Spanish-held territory. The Senate expelled him, then dismissed the impeachment in 1799 on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction over a senator who was no longer in office, and, on the view of many, because a senator is not a "civil officer." Two lessons came out of it: the process is for officers of the executive and judicial branches, and Congress polices its own members by expulsion, which takes a two-thirds vote of the chamber, not by impeachment.

The strongest case against impeachment as a tool, and the answer

Here is the best version of the skeptic's argument: impeachment is a blunt instrument that turns every disagreement over policy into a crisis, it paralyzes government, and a President's party will shield him, so it never works. Better to let the voters decide at the next election.

There is real force in it. Elections do settle most disputes, and the Constitution itself says impeachment is for serious offenses, not policy fights. Johnson's trial is a warning about using it as a political weapon. But the answer is that elections come at fixed intervals, and some conduct cannot wait. A president who obstructs justice, takes bribes, or betrays the country should not get a free pass until Election Day. The remedy has to exist even if it is almost never used.

I'd put my own view this way. Impeachment should be reserved for abuses of the office that are serious, provable and clear to people outside the president's opponents. The less a case looks like it was cooked up by the opposition, the better it works. When it looks like politics by other means, it fails, and it should.

What this means for a family at the kitchen table

For the ordinary citizen, the lesson is practical. You can follow an impeachment on Congress.gov, where the resolutions, committee reports and roll-call votes are all posted. You can check the House Clerk's website for who voted how. You do not need a cable pundit to tell you whether two-thirds exists. Count it yourself. You may also read How a Bill Really Becomes Law, Including the Steps Schoolhouse Rock Skipped to see how the same House rules shape the rest of the work Congress does, and Madison Built a Government Where Ambition Fights Ambition, and It Works for why the founders built so many brakes into the system.

If you want the live record of how members voted on matters before Congress, the votes pages on this site link to roll calls in a form you can search.

The bottom line

• Impeachment is the House's accusation, by simple majority. Removal requires a Senate conviction by two-thirds of the senators present, which is 67 if all 100 are in the chamber.
• No president has ever been removed by it. Johnson fell one vote short in 1868, Clinton fell far short in 1999, and Trump was acquitted twice. Nixon resigned before the House voted.
• "High crimes and misdemeanors" is a political standard with legal forms, argued over since 1787. Be wary of anyone, on either side, who claims it is perfectly clear.
• Courts stay out. Nixon v. United States (1993) held that the Senate's method of trial is for the Senate. Do not expect a judge to rescue either party.
• Check the record yourself on Congress.gov and the House Clerk's site, and judge an impeachment by whether a fair-minded neighbor of the other party could be persuaded by the evidence. That is the test that decides whether it succeeds.