Even though the House has ample reason to impeach President Trump, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is launching the official impeachment probe in the wrong way.
Pelosi announced the beginning of the House investigation on her own authority. This step defies historical precedent and official prior understandings of how the process should work. The speaker should hold a vote of the full House as to whether to launch the inquiry. Only upon a majority vote should it proceed.
To be clear, the Constitution does not spell out how the House should handle impeachment, and official House rules never even mention any variation of the word “impeach.” Pelosi is breaking no specific rules. The only thing absolutely indisputable is that however the inquiry begins and proceeds, it ultimately takes a majority of voters in the House in order to impeach an official and send the case to the Senate.
For something as serious as impeachment, though, one that would involve removing from office a duly elected president, extreme care must be taken to make every step be obviously legitimate. Pelosi therefore should ensure that the very start of the process be kosher.
Two factors weigh quite heavily in favor of requiring a full vote of the House even to begin an impeachment inquiry. First is precedent. In both the Watergate case involving President Richard Nixon and the Whitewater-Lewinsky case involving President Bill Clinton, the House held formal votes just to open the official impeachment probes.
This is a matter, effectively, of due process. It lets the target of potential impeachment, and the nation, know this isn’t mere congressional oversight but instead a formal, constitutional matter that might lead to eviction from office. Secondly, it puts every member of the House on record about whether the alleged abuse is serious enough to merit the House’s and the nation’s special attention. This helps keep impeachment from being treated too cavalierly.
To break these precedents is to invite doubts about the propriety and fairness of the current investigation.
The second factor arguing for a full House vote to start the probe is the House’s official historian’s web page on impeachment. Absent contradictory evidence or explicit House rules, anyone who has served in the House knows this is usually considered definitive authority.
Here’s what it says about how impeachment can begin: “Individual Members of the House can introduce impeachment resolutions like ordinary bills, or the House could initiate proceedings by passing a resolution authorizing an inquiry.” It gives no other options.
Well, Pelosi has neither introduced a bill nor asked for a resolution authorizing an inquiry. Therefore, she has jumped the gun, and exceeded her appropriate authority (by understood norms rather than written rules), by unilaterally announcing that impeachment proceedings have begun.
Pelosi should halt the train, introduce a formal resolution, and require the House to vote. Otherwise, she befouls the investigation from its very start.
