LETTER: Constitution doesn’t prohibit a partisan impeachment

Kim Riley claims in her Thursday letter that the Founding Fathers intended impeachment to occur only in “extreme bipartisan cases.” Nothing in the Constitution supports this.

To the contrary, the Constitution permits the commencement of impeachment proceedings against a president by a simple majority vote of the 435 members of the House. Impeachment would proceed even if the House vote was 218-216 in favor of impeachment, and even if the vote was predominately or exclusively along party lines.

If the Founding Fathers had intended that impeachment proceed only in “extreme bipartisan cases,” they would have included a provision in the Constitution specifying a threshold higher than a simple majority for the vote in the House.