“What people think is going to happen

can turn out to be very different from what happens.”

“Because it has to do with elected officials

holding another elected official to account

for their conduct.”

When the framers of the Constitution

created a process to remove a president from office,

they were well … kind of vague.

So to understand how it’s going to play out,

the past is really our best guide.

“I think we’re just all in for a really crazy ride.”

Collectively, these New York Times reporters

have covered U.S. politics for over 150 years.

“I’m also a drummer in a band, so …”

They’ve reported on past impeachment inquiries.

“Yea, I’m lost in Senate wonderland.”

And they say that the three we’ve had

so far have been full of twists and turns.

“The president of the United States

is not guilty as charged.”

In short, expect the unexpected.

First, the process.

Impeachment is technically only the initial stage.

“Common misconceptions about impeachment

are that impeachment by itself means removal from office.

It doesn’t.

The impeachment part of the process

is only the indictment that sets up a trial.”

The Constitution describes offenses

that are grounds for removing the president from office

as bribery, treason and —

“They say high crimes and misdemeanors,

which, really, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“The framers didn’t give us a guidebook to it.

They simply said,

that the House had the responsibility

for impeachment and the Senate

had the responsibility for the trial.”

One of the things missing from the Constitution?

How an impeachment inquiry should start.

And that has generally been a source of drama.

Basically, anything goes.

“In fact, in the Andrew Johnson case

they voted to impeach him without even having

drafted the articles of impeachment.”

For Richard Nixon,

his case started with several investigations

that led to public hearings.

That part of the process went on for two years,

and yielded revelation after revelation, connecting Nixon

to a politically-motivated burglary at D.N.C. headquarters —

“… located in the Watergate office building.”

— and its subsequent cover-up.

“Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any

listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?”

“I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir.”

“This was a shocker.

Everybody in the White House recognized

how damaging this could be.”

As the House drafted articles of impeachment,

Nixon lost the support of his party.

“O.K.,

I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”

“I was asked to write the farewell piece that

ran the morning after Nixon resigned.

And this is what I wrote:

The central question is how a man who won so much

could have lost so much.”

So for Nixon, it more or less ended

after the investigations.

But for Bill Clinton, that phase was just the beginning.

“This is the information.”

An independent counsel’s investigation

into his business dealings unexpectedly

turned into a very public inquiry

about his personal life.

“The idea that a president of the United States

was having an affair with a White House intern and then

a federal prosecutor was looking at that,

it was just extraordinary.”

That investigation led to public hearings

in the House Judiciary Committee.

“When the Starr Report was being delivered to Congress

it was a little bit like the O.J. chase,

only a political one.

There were two black cars.

They were being filmed live on CNN.

They were heading towards the Capitol.

We were watching it and a little bit agog.”

Public opinion is key.

And the media plays a huge part in the process.

This was definitely true for Clinton.

“You know it was just a crazy time.

We worked in the Senate press gallery."

“All your colleagues are kind of

piled on top of each other.”

“We had crummy computers, the fax machine would always break.

The printer would always break.”

After committee hearings,

the House brought formal impeachment charges.

“It was very tense.

I thought that the Saturday of the impeachment vote

in the House was one of the most tense days

I’d experienced in Washington.”

And it turned out, also, full of surprises.

“The day of impeachment arrived, everyone’s making

very impassioned speeches about whether Bill Clinton

should or should not be impeached

and Livingston rises to give an argument for

the House Republicans.

He started to talk about how Clinton could resign.”

“You, sir, may resign your post.”

“And all of a sudden people start booing and saying,

‘Resign, resign’!”

“So I must set the example.”

“He announced he was resigning

because he had had extramarital affairs

and challenged President Clinton to do

the only honorable thing, in his view —”

“I hope President Clinton will follow.”

“— to resign as well, so there was all this drama

unfolding even in the midst of impeachment.”

Then it went to the Senate for trial.

The Constitution gets a little more specific about this part.

“The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

is supposed to preside over that trial.”

“Rehnquist, he showed up in this robe he had made for himself,

which had gold stripes on the sleeves

because he liked Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“The Senate is the actual jury.”

“You will do impartial justice according

to the Constitution and laws.

So help you, God.”

“This is a copy of the rules of the Senate

for handling impeachment.

They’re actually very specific.”

“Meet six days a week.”

“Convene at noon.

The senators have to sit at their desks

and remain quiet in their role as jurors.

And not talk, which trust me, is going to be a problem for some

of the senators who are used to talking all the time.”

It’s just like a courtroom trial.

There are prosecutors who present

the case against the president.

“That was perjury.”

Only, they’re members of the House,

and they’re called managers.

Then the senators, or the jurors, vote.

And things are still, unpredictable.

“The options are guilty or not guilty.

But there was one senator —”

“Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania.”

“Under Scottish law,

there are three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty

and not proved.”

“— which is not a thing.”

“And everybody just looks, you know, how do you even

record that vote?”

In the end, there were not enough votes to oust Clinton.

“What’s amazing about this whole thing to me

wasn’t so much the constitutional process.

It was that it felt to me like the beginning of really

intense partisanship, the weaponization of partisanship.”

And here’s the thing:

An impeachment charge has never

gotten the two-thirds majority it needs in the Senate

to actually oust a president from office.

“So you could end up having a situation where

the president is impeached, acquitted

and runs for re-election and wins re-election.”

And that would be a first.

“This is my ticket to the impeachment trial

of President Bill Clinton.

I don’t think you’ll find these on StubHub.”