Imprisoned US Presidents

President Donald Trump illustration (unsplash)

JAKARTA - The President of the United States, Donald Trump will be remembered in the history of Uncle Sam's country as the third president to be impeached. Previously, there were two US presidents who had been impeached, namely Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. What is the reason?

As many as 230 members of the United States House of Representatives from the Democratic Party in the voting yesterday (18/12) agreed to impeach Trump for abuse of power. Reporting from CNN and the New York Times, in addition to the abuse of power, the US House of Representatives also agreed that Trump had undermined the powers of Congress.

"Today is a sad day for this country. The President's careless actions require us to file an impeachment article," said the Chairman of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, at the Capitol Building quoted by CNN, Thursday, December 19.

Long before Donald Trump, Uncle Sam's country had impeached its president. Two of them are President Andrew Johnson and President Bill Clinton.

The first US president to ever face impeachment proceedings was Andrew Johnson. Quoted by businessinsider, It all started when he removed his secretary Edwin Stanton from office in 1867. For his actions, Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act by firing an official without obtaining Senate permission.

President Andrew Johnson (Wikimedia)

Previously, Johnson only suspended Stanton, but when congress intervened to get Stanton back into office, Johnson instead fired him on February 21, 1868. Three days later the parliament impeached Johnson.

The council said Johnson had broken the law and embarrassed the US congress. For 11 weeks the Senate tried the Johnson case, but in the end the Senate decided to release Johnson. The decision was taken because of a senate deficiency that found Johnson guilty.

Besides Johnson, the US president who was impeached was Clinton. Since 1994, he has been dealing with scandals. Starting from the investigation of a financial case known as "whitewater". In the same year, Clinton was also sued by an Arkansas employee Paula Jones who accused Clinton of sexual harassment.

New York Times news page about President Bill Clinton (BBC)

In January 1998, in the Jones case, Clinton denied ever having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But news of Clinton having an affair with Lewinsky spread.

In August 1998, Clinton finally admitted to having an affair with Lewinsky. Two months later the US House of Representatives chose Clinton's impeachment process.

Then on December 11, 1998, the US House of Representatives approved three articles of impeachment containing Clinton's allegations of lying to the panel of judges, taking perjury to deny his affair with Lewinsky, and obstructing justice. Then the following day, the fourth article was approved by the House of Representatives, namely allegations of abuse of Clinton's power.

Finally, on December 19, 1998, the DPR charged Clinton with two articles, namely perjury and obstruction of justice. However, despite being impeached, Clinton finally escaped after a hearing in the Senate on February 12, 1999.