Washington: The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump on the basis of two charges — abuse of power and obstruction of the Congress. But he is not the first American President to be impeached.
The others were as the following:
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the US and he served from April 1865 to March 1869. He was President Abraham Lincoln’s Vice President and assumed presidency after the latter was assassinated.
He came to power just as the Civil War concluded and according to a BBC report, Johnson constantly sparred with the Republican-held Congress over how to rebuild the defeated US South.
The Republicans pushed for a legislation to punish former Confederate leaders and protect the rights of freed slaves. Johnson used his presidential veto to block the Republican efforts at every turn.
This led to a conflict, leading to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. But he was subsequently acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the US, served from January 1969 to August 1974. His near-impeachment traces back to the 1972 break-in of the Democratic Party’s headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington D.C.
Investigations revealed that the burglars were paid by funds from Nixon’s re-election campaign.
In August 1974, as the House Judiciary Committee prepared impeachment articles, Nixon was forced to release Oval Office recordings in which he was heard ordering his staff to have the CIA tell the FBI to stop its investigation into the Watergate break-in.
Fearing a loss of political support and that he would be impeached and removed from office, Nixon resigned that same month. He remains the only US President in history to have done so.
Bill Clinton
Within a year of taking office in January 1993, Bill Clinton, the 42nd American President, was under probe by a Justice Department special prosecutor into real estate dealings and his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
In December 1998, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to impeach Clinton on two counts: perjury and obstruction of Congress. But in February 1999, Clinton was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
For the year that the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal consumed the country, the President resisted growing calls to resign, the BBC said in a report.
But Clinton left office in January 2001 with a 65 per cent approval rating – the highest of any of American President since the Second World War.
