With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, many political experts speculate that President Trump would likely only be impeached if the Republicans decided his presence in the White House would wreck their own chances of re election in the mid term elections. Some predict that if the Democrats sweep the Republicans out of the House in the mid terms, a Democratic House majority would demand an impeachment inquiry against the
president seem partisan to you. Our next guest, Keith Weddington, a professor at politics at Princeton University, has written a column in Law Fair Bloc entitled an impeachment should not be a partisan affair? So, Keith, leaving aside for a moment the question of whether impeachment is warranted under the Constitution, how do you get to the point in real life
where it is not a partisan affair? Well, I think part of the question is whether or not the facts they're discovered, UM so clearly violate expectations about how an office should be conducted that people on both sides of the aisle um can agree that something has gone terribly wrong. Um. It's been commonplace that most for impeachments have been a federal judges who behaved badly, and in most of those cases we've had bipartisan impeachments. Presidents just raised a very
tricky problem. From that perspective, Keith Um. One argument that people have been putting out for UH moving forth towards impeachment now is that there are norms that have to be defended. There are standards of behavior that we have for a president, and many of his critics say he has gone beyond those Uh, he has flouted those norms. What's the response to that to people who want to move quickly with impeachment, Well, I think it's almost impossible
to move quickly with impeachment. I mean, part of part of the effort has to be to build up the factual groundwork on what actually happened. You need to build UM widespread political support UM that what's happened is UM grave enough, and there are no other obvious solutions besides moving to an impeachment UM. So they just can't be
a rush on that process. UM. But teaching somebody because they are dramatically outside the norms of behavior is one of the things UM that have UM driven impeachment efforts before UM, and part of The question is how the administration respond to that. Can the administration put its own house in order um uh and come back to more
normal local practices so that impeachment doesn't seem necessary. Would you say that some of President Trump's recent um, the recent events or recent revelations about him, are a little more than outside the norm? For example, revealing classified foreign intelligence information to Russian government officials, UM, trying to influence former FBI Director Jim Comey away from the Russian investigation. Are those just a little bit beyond the norm? Those
are certainly troubling UM and UH. Congress ought to UM make every effort to try to figure out exactly what happened in those cases and try to lay out the context of what happened to see UM, how reasonable an explanation there is for what happened, UM, Whether these are things that might create recurring problems, or whether these were one off mistakes that were made UM and have already been corrected in lots of ways. UM. So there's lots of important issues that would have to be thought through
before necessarily jumping to impeachments. UM. But UM, you know those are those are clearly troubling UM and and um appropriately, I think Congress UM thinks that they ought to be looking at that carefully. Oh do you think that? Um? Well, let me ask you this if um uh, you know, Congresses, let's let's say Democrats take over the House at the
next at the mid term election. Are you is your argument that they should not move for impeachment without pretty good assurance that you would get the it's two thirds of the Senate right to get to to get I mean, that's that's a pretty high standard. But is your argument that they should hold off until they're pretty confident they would actually uh get the conviction? Well, I think it depends on on what they're trying to accomplish, um uh.
And so so, if for example, they really think, um, it's absolutely necessary that this president be removed before the next election, um, then trying to lay the groundwork for
an actual conviction in the Senate becomes essential. Um. Eve. Instead, the goal is simply too you know, on the on the low sides or justcre political points, but but on a better way of approaching, as to think that we want to re establish an emphasize certain norms of behave You're um, it may not actually be necessary to get conviction or to try to guarantee that people will in fact change their behavior um and and behave in ways they're more appropriate. We will see what what's what happens
with this. We're going to be discussing this many many times, i'm sure in the future. And all three presidents who have faced impeachment proceedings, the impeachments were brought by the opposing political party. Uh just a note there, thank you for being with us on Bloomberg Law. That's Keith Weddington, Professor of Politics at Princeton University,