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Moore History - Impeachment - What Is It And Why? · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  It's the third hour of the Morning Show with Preston's Got High. I'm Preston.
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  That's Grant. I sound pretty good today. I sound better today than
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  I did yesterday. I'm having some coughing spells that I'm keeping you from.
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  And as a result of being just a little bit under the weather and running
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  a low grade fever last night, I advised our guests, who normally come
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  in studio, that we ought to do it on the phone. And so
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  we are joined by doctor Ed Moore a little more history this morning on the
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  Morning Show with Preston Scott. Good morning, doctor Moore. How are you,
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  sir? I'm good. I'm better than you are. It sounds like
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  well, I sound terrific. I think the dulca tones are in order,
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  but deeper than normal. You think, yeah, sounds good. You could
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  think for the acchoir, now that you can do the base. Oh trust
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  me, I've been a second base in choirs. All right. We've been
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  talking about myths and scandals, and when you brought up the topic of impeachment,
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  boy, you talk about scandals. Boy, there, that's where you
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  oftentimes find yourself talking about impeachment is with scandals. First, let's start.
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  Let's start here, what is impeachment because quite honestly, we've heard it so
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  frequently in the last few years that I'm not sure anyone really knows what it
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  means anymore. Yeah, and to me, looking back historically, the scandal
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  is almoscht as much in those seeking to impeach as much as it is for
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  the person they're trying to impeach. You know, it's a process that got
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  debated heavily back in seventeen eighty seven at the Constitutional Convention, and they were
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  reluctant somewhat to put it in if it was some back and forth. They
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  were concerned that it might compromise the separation of powers, having the legislator's certain
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  judgment of the of the offender or the alleged offender. And then Elbridge Jerry,
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  the famous person we know his name from jerry mandering. Actually he later
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  served as a vice president. He said, got a quote from him,
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  A good magistrate will not fear impeachments. A bad one ought to be kept
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  in fear of them. And when you look at the history of impeachments,
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  more often than that the fear should be of the people speaking to impeach and
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  why are they doing it? And it hasn't been used that often. The
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  language actually says, President, vice President, and all civil officers of the
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  United States shall be removed from all office on impeachment for and conviction of treason,
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  bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. And I would venture to
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  say hardly anybody could really define what high crimes and misdemeanors is. You know
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  what it is, what it really means. Most people don't. And when
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  you go back, it comes from the British. It's old, very very
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  old, and it can only be used against high crimes and misdemeanors, can
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  only be used against people who hold some kind of a public office. And
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  in Britain, way back in the sixteen seventeen centuries, it included arresting someone
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  so they could really not run for office again. And in Article two,
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  Section four in our Constitution's a dual process, the US House can hold hearings,
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  sometimes don't have to. Sometimes in history they just filed letters of impeachment,
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  bred out on the floor. Nobody's seen him before. I mean,
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  it's been a very mishmashi kind of process. They sit in judgment, they
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  vote, they have debate on the floor and then they vote, and it
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  only requires a majority vote in the House to send articles of impeachment to the
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  Senate. And then the Senate holds trials and we'll have that significant trial,
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  usually convened and headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And there
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  it takes two thirds votes, So you need sixty seven votes in the Senate
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  to actually fully remove someone from office. But the terminent it applies to the
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  House, not to the Sentate, not to removal of office. It's the
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  filing of impeachment in a clouded world. Consider him your truth detector. The
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  Morning Show with Preston Scott on News Radio one hundred point seven WUFLA back with
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  doctor Edmore, our resident historian, in a segment we call more history.
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  Aren't we clever? And today we're talking about impeachments. When was the first
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  recorded episode of a federal impeachment proceeding? Eighteen oh four? Actually a guy
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  named John Pickering. He was a US district judge, and in history,
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  most of the impeachment proceedings have gone against various judges. But I started laughing
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  when I read the reason they impeached poor mister Pickering. Was for chronic intoxication.
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  Imagine that a politician getting convicted for chronic intoxication. But the reasons have
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  been taxi, they soliciting bribes, lying to a grand jury, and investigations
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  has been kind of a wide array. The very first president to face impeachment
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  proceedings was Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson took office upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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  and in eighteen sixty eight they were one vote short, only one vote short,
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  in the Senate for kicking him out. And the charge against him was
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  that he removed the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton from office, and Congress had
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  passed the Tenure of Office Act, and they were mad at him because he
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  removed this guy from office without asking for their approval. So it shows how
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  over time, how we've evolved in terms of responsibility of the executive branch and
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  the sensive branch. And back then they wanted after the Tenure of Office Act,
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  they wanted the president to check with them before they hired fired. And
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  you know, you've got the confirmation proceeding on the hiring end, but they
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  wanted on the back end too. They wanted where you couldn't remove anybody from
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  office if you're a president. They wanted to seriously weakend the office president.
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  And he stayed in office by one vote, not too bad. And then
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  it wasn't used again for presidents all the way until Bill Clinton, and we're
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  all familiar with what happened there, and they actually went under him for perjury
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  and obstruction of justice. Didn't really go anywhere. It was in his second
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  term already, and then you know, met media being on TV and made
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  a much bigger deal about that. Back when Andrew Johnson went through it,
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  nobody really paid any attention to it. And then after Clinton it nothing really
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  happened until mister Donald Trump in twenty nineteen and then again in twenty twenty one.
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  He's the only person to have to go through impeach from proceedings twice.
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  They charged him with abuse of power and obstruction of justice, again saying that
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  he pressured foreign agents to interfere in the twenty twenty election. Foreign agents being
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  actually the country that Joe Biden famously went to and is on tape saying that
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  he was going to withhold or moved the withhold money unless they removed the prosecutor.
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  Talking about Ukraine, one wouldn't think Ukraine would be then involved, but
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  they were a big part of the nineteen twenty nineteen Trump abuse and then twenty
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  one ed Let me ask you, so Watergate never rose to the level of
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  impeachment because Nixon resigned. He resigns. Yeah, he's skidaddled out of office.
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  There have been a serious John Tyler, they called him his accidency.
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  John Tyler became president when William Harrison was assassinated, and even members of his
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  own party didn't like him. Apparently he was kind of a grumpy guy,
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  and they tried to impeach him, but nothing went anywhere. The same thing
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  happened with Nixon. Nixon likely would have been fully impeached and convicted, been
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  the first to be convicted. He saw the riding on the wall and he
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  got out of dodge. And so you know, it's the only three that
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  actually have had a vote in the House of Representatives that are president the presidents
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  Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. And the interesting thing,
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  well, Trump Trump his last term of office. They began appeaching proceedings in
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  January and he was leaving office, I think January twentieth. Their twenty first
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  they the two parts of the impeachment are, if you're convicted, you're removed
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  automatically from office. Then they have a secondary vote, and the second vote
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  would be whether or not you could ever run for office again. And that
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  takes just a majority vote. And I think that's what they were headed for
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  with Donald Trump. Back with doctor ed Moore, more history here on the
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  Morning Show with Preston Scott, Doctor Moore. We were just talking in the
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  break, I mean Bill Clinton was it was established that he perjured himself,
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  he did lie, But yet that speaks to the partisanship that exists in this
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  whole process. Yeah, the founder, We're right and having concerns about this
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  process. It is totally and completely partisan. One of the things that stunned
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  me when I went back and looking at all this and remember in the Senator
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  it takes sixty seven votes, when Trump's two times they had fifty two and
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  fifty three votes. The very first US Senator in history, in US history,
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  to cross party lines on an impeachment vote was Mitt Romney with Donald Trump,
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  the very first whole history of the country. It just shows that this
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  entire process is politicized, weaponized politically. If seven cross party lines in the
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  second Trump one, but still nowhere ever getting near sixty seven votes because the
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  party in power is going to maintain that they want to keep their guy,
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  and there's too much at stake for losing them, and it just you know,
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  there's a lot of discussion now, but whether Biden and you know,
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  all the Comber's investigation, the House Oversight Committee and all that, they're going
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  to run out of time. Biden will be long gone from the office,
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  maybe from this earth before they ever got around to do anything with it,
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  because they realize and note and the Democrat controlled US Senate there never would impeach
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  never doctor Moore. Is impeachment on a state level as partisan, not quite
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  as partisan? Actually, I found a lot of bipartisan to remove and at
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  the state level, a lot of states have it. I think the only
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  state that doesn't is Oregon is the only one without a process. Oregon odd
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  in a lot of ways, but you go back and look at the I
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  think there have been eight governors removed in the history of the country. Fifteen
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  filed articles of impeachment that passed and had Senate trials at state level. First
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  one was in eighteen sixty two, and one of the things that struck me
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  when I started looking at when are they? When did they occur? So
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  many of them occurred during the Civil War era, and particularly in reconstruction.
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  All during reconstruction, Florida had a governor called Harrison Reid in eighteen sixty eight,
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  the reconstruction governor, and they tried to impeach him twice and actually removed
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  him from office. State Supreme Court removed him from office. He went back
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  to his house over in front of me to beach. I think he lived.
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  And then when the guy that replaced him, the lieutenant governor, was
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  in office and left town. Somehow Harrison Reed knew it, came back in
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  and had a coup basically and took the office back over and said okay,
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  I'm governor again and then basically locked out his replacement. And then they started
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  having court hearings and he ended up retaining the office because they couldn't get enough
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  votes. They couldn't get a quorum in the Senate to convict them. They
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  probably had the votes to convict him. And then this is one of those
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  who were Democrats and Republican. You had William Holden, not the actor,
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  but he was the governor of North Carolina again in sixty five and in eighteen
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  sixty eight. He was a Republican governor during reconstruction and white supremacist in North
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  Carolina murdered the sheriff adjusted the peace in the States Senator and a mob lynched
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  a local black official named White Outlaw in North Carolina, and he responded to
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  the violence by invoking martial law and ordered the KKK members all to be arrested.
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  They arrested over one hundred of them, and the Democrat General Assembly brought
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  impeach from the articles because he did that, because he invoked martial law trying
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  to control these crazy lynch mobs running around town. There were actually some Republicans
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  that voted as well to impeach some poor guys. Then there wasn't after Reconstruction,
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  there weren't many until nineteen thirteen. A guy named William Quote playing Bill
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  Soulzer. He was the governor of New York, a Democrat. They impeached
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  him after less than year in office for reporting false information on his campaign.
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  Expensive Well there tells you it was just purely driven politically. In Texas,
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  James Ferguson, most people have heard of Ma Ferguson. Well, her husband
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  was governor of Texas. He got in a feud with the University of Texas.
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  This is a governor feuding with one university because he wanted to remove some
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  faculty members. He wanted the bar to Regis to fire him, and so
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  he detoled all the state appropriation. They removed him from office for that.
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  Always fascinating stuff, Doctor Moore, thank you for the time, my friend.
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  We'll talk again soon. You have a wonderful day. I hope you
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  feel better. Thank you, sir. Doctor edmore with us this morning,
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  a little more history here in the Morning Show with Preston Scott