What will really happen if Trump is impeached

The United States is not a monarchy. While the Founding Fathers couldn't have prepared for everything and they certainly made some big mistakes, one area they were especially clear on was limiting the power of the presidency. Though certain presidents might talk big and authoritarian, the presidential position is supposed to be one of servitude to the people: the U.S. put you in there, and the U.S. can kick you out. 

To ensure that any possible tyrants could be bumped to the curb, the Constitution enshrined a process called impeachment. Not many former presidents have been impeached, but whatever your political stance might be, you have to admit there's a chance that President Donald Trump could be put in the hot seat. Robert Mueller and his team have been incredibly tight-lipped, but the investigation seems to be moving along. If Trump does get impeached, what happens next? How does the process work? Here's the deal.

Impeachment almost never happens because it's a huge deal. Politicians are obnoxiously good at squeaking between rhetorical gray areas, so for the country's top politician to come under legal fire requires pretty intense allegations, evidence, and at least some degree of public support for the impeachment. That said, the trigger has been pulled a few times. President Andrew Johnson was impeached for firing Cabinet officials without Senate approval in the wake of the Civil War and was acquitted by only one vote. Over a century later, Bill Clinton was charged with both obstruction of justice and lying under oath. He was rather easily acquitted.

Ironically, Richard Nixon, probably the president most popularly associated with impeachment, was never impeached. When Nixon's spiral of corruption caught up to him and Congress began the impeachment process, Nixon's response was to put in his resignation, hit the road, and disappear. Don't worry, Gerald Ford pardoned him for all his crimes.

Well, it's complicated.

On at least two occasions in the past, according to NPR, the Justice Department has stated their official position that a sitting U.S. president cannot be charged with any crimes until they leave the office — whether by choice, a lost election, or by force. Now, not everybody agrees with this stance. As usual, different experts all have different ideas, and the debates get pretty intense. So far, though, that's been the policy, and any challenge to that would probably involve a lengthy path through the courts. This is why impeachment is a vital way to ensure democratic norms. Once a president is impeached, it means they have to stand trial in the Senate. Whether that's fair or not, it's likely how things will proceed, as far as any criminal charges against Trump might go.

Now, what happens if the Mueller investigation does conclude that Trump broke the law? At this point, the ball gets passed to the House of Representatives, and they get to decide whether to take the next shot.

Get out the popcorn because the big show is now underway. While all that House stuff from before will be relatively standard C-SPAN material, everything changes when the Senate is in the driver's seat. At this point, as Vox explains, the Senate is quite literally holding a trial against the president of the United States. So if you thought the Kavanaugh hearings ruined tons of family dinners across the nation, the point where Trump's impeachment goes to the Senate would be a thousand times bigger. 

Here's how it works. The House becomes the prosecutor, while the president's lawyers are the defense team and the Senate is the jury. Presiding over the case would be Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, but the Senate does have the power to overrule his judgments. From here on out, the action will probably resemble a stereotypical court case, with witnesses being called and so forth. In the end, the Senate holds a vote on whether to acquit or convict the sitting president. For the president to be removed from office, a full two-thirds of the Senate has to vote to convict him. That's no small number, for sure, and in the cases of Johnson and Clinton, this is where their impeachment cases ended with acquittals. That's why the Senate is the main place where Trump's opponents face their biggest obstacle.

If you're Donald Trump and you're facing impeachment, your worst nightmare is to end up in the predicament of Richard Nixon. Why? Because as CNN points out, the endgame for an impeachment often has a lot to do with approval ratings. For example, when Bill Clinton was impeached, his popularity numbers were already high. Once the media circus surrounding Clinton's trial came to be seen as a partisan attack, his numbers soared even higher. As a result, he was acquitted.

Nixon, on the other hand? He got so muddled in negativity that his own party turned against him, and his approval ratings plunged to the bottom of the barrel. He resigned not as a favor to anyone but because if he were to face his own impeachment head-on, he almost definitely would have been convicted. The key here, like it or not, is that impeachment has a lot to do with politics. For Republican Senators to go against Trump, the charges against him either have to be so awful that they feel ethically obligated to remove him from office, or more likely, his approval ratings need to sink so far underwater that the Senators would be worried about losing reelection if they didn't vote against him.

If Trump ends up in the same hot water as Nixon, it's entirely conceivable that he might try the same tactic of resigning from office before impeachment proceedings can begin. After all, it worked for Tricky Dick. But this move depends on his VP-turned-president pardoning him like Ford did, and as mentioned, that could be risky for Mike Pence's future. If Trump doesn't feel safe in Pence's hands, he could try to stir the pot, distracting the nation by inciting a military or foreign policy crisis. That's another Nixon move, according to Newsweek, but it didn't work for Nixon and it's unlikely to work for Trump. Impeachment is a serious matter. People aren't going to look the other way.

On the other hand, former George W. Bush adviser Alan Steinberg has predicted a rather unusual third possibility: Steinberg believes if the water gets too hot and Trump is facing the possibility of real jail time, he might strike an unprecedented deal with all relevant authorities. Steinberg predicts he could agree to resign from the presidency in exchange for immunity for himself, his company, and his children. This move, should all parties agree to it, would probably be the only way for him to dodge charges, if they were severe enough. His opponents would have to shake hands on something totally unheard of, though. This sounds hard to imagine, but hey, it's been a bizarre last few years in the United States.

Okay, so imagine a world where Trump does get impeached, removed, and imprisoned. Who becomes president? You know the answer: Vice President Mike Pence, former governor of Indiana, an extremely polarizing politician. According to Fortune, Pence then has freedom to choose a new VP (subject to Congressional confirmation), and in 2020, he probably runs for election as the GOP candidate. Now, if he wins? Then he gets to run again in 2024. Hypothetically, if Pence passes on the position — and yeah, right, considering that he's apparently been coveting the presidency his whole life, according to a spotlight in the New Yorker — then the next person in line to the presidency is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Hey, crazier things have happened. While Pelosi herself has tried to tone down much of the impeachment talk, according to Newsweek, she has made it clear that a decision on the matter probably rests on the results of the Mueller investigation.