Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Impeachment Isn’t Just About Ukraine

Congress will consider the president’s actions in a larger political context. And that should worry him.

October 30, 2019 at 11:28 AM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

It’s complicated.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

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Impeachment, political scientists will tell you, is a political act and not a legal one. Here’s Julia Azari back in May:

What does that mean in practice? When members of Congress weigh whether to impeach and remove President Donald Trump, they’ll do so within a much larger political context. Sure, they’ll consider the evidence they’re presented, any relevant laws and what the Constitution says. But they’ll also consider quite a bit more — and quite properly.