For more than a century, through world wars and technological revolutions, no American president faced removal from office for betraying the nation’s trust. On Wednesday, for the third time in many Americans’ lifetimes, a president will be pushed onto the very public path that could lead from commander in chief to defendant in chief. …
Popular knowledge and opinion have been vital to the outcome of each impeachment process. Contrary to its judicial trappings, impeachment is more a political process than a judicial one. House members act as grand jurors, deciding whether to take a president to trial, senators sit as trial jurors, and the chief justice of the United States acts as the judge. But historically, senators have weighed the politics of the moment in their decisions at least as heavily as the evidence before them. CONT.
Marc Fisher, Washington Post