Only two U.S. presidents have been formally impeached by Congress—Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—and no U.S. president has ever been removed from office through impeachment. In addition to Johnson and Clinton, only two other U.S. presidents have faced formal impeachment inquiries in the House of Representatives: Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Many other presidents have been threatened with impeachment by political foes without gaining any real traction in Congress. The framers of the Constitution intentionally made it difficult for Congress to remove a sitting president. The impeachment process starts in the House of Representatives with a formal impeachment inquiry. If the House Judiciary Committee finds sufficient grounds, its members write and pass articles of impeachment, which then go to the full House for a vote. A simple majority in the House is all that’s needed to formally impeach a president. But that doesn’t mean he or she is out of a job. The final stage is the Senate impeachment trial. Only if two-thirds of the Senate find the president guilty of the crimes laid out in the articles of impeachment is the POTUS removed from office. Although Congress has impeached and removed eight federal officials—all federal judges—no president has ever been found guilty during a Senate impeachment trial. Andrew Johnson came awfully close, though; he barely escaped a guilty verdict by one vote.
