Impeaching Trump is wrong, they argue, because it is anti-democratic. The guardrails between the federal government and the states also held when it came to Trumps campaign to win the election. But it was too latebecause he had already won. On May 26, 1868, the impeachment trial in the Senate ended with Johnsons opponents failing to get sufficient votes to remove him from office, and he finished the rest of his term. None of them were actually impeached, meaning those articles of impeachment failed to garner the necessary votes to move them to the Senate for a hearing. He resigned from office, he was not impeached. The guardrails of democracy held. Impeachment - GovInfo Impeachment Was Necessary to Protect Our Democracy In addition to federal impeachment, state legislatures are also granted the power to impeach elected officials in 49 of the 50 states, with Oregon being the lone exception. This website is shared by Public Citizen Inc. and Public Citizen Foundation. Out of the four legal scholars who testified before the House Judiciary Committee about impeachment, three. READ MORE: Watergate Scandal: Timeline, Summary & Deep Throat. Because Trump has demonstrated, over and over again, that he is willing to manipulate the results of the election in his favor, even if that means working with a foreign power to undermine our democracy. The Senate then acts as courtroom, jury and judge, except in presidential impeachment trials, during which the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court acts as judge. It is the first step in a remedial process that of removal from public nd ensures that the rights of the people are stable and guaranteed. Trumps assertion that impeachment is anti-democratic, however, has received less scrutiny. This essay is adapted from Neal Katyal and Sam Koppelmans forthcoming book Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump, to be published on Nov. 26 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In such a case, impeaching those officials is the only option that could save the democratic institutions and hence the democracy in the country.