WNYC Studio Originally Posted: April 29, 2019 We’ve had only two presidential impeachment trials in the Senate — for Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — and both ended in acquittals. While we have little experience with this presidential removal apparatus, there’s much to learn from the history of impeachment, going back to the framers who wrote the measure into our constitution. Jeffrey Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, and coauthor of Impeachment: An American History. He explains to Bob that the authors of the constitution, having just freed themselves from a tyrant, wanted to make sure that there would be a way to counter what seemed to be an inevitable impulse toward tyranny in their new United States. LISTEN

Washington Post Originally Post: April 15, 2019 By Jeffrey A. Engel Jeffrey A. Engel is director of Southern Methodist University’s Center for Presidential History and co-author of "Impeachment: An American History." The views here are his own. The Constitution’s authors wouldn’t have needed any summary of the special counsel’s report to know it was time to impeach the president. Neither would they have waited to see whether its full text provided evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The group that created our nation’s founding document would already have judged Donald Trump unfit for office — and removed him — because he’s repeatedly shown a dearth of the quality they considered paramount in a president: a willingness to put national interest above his own. They called it virtue. George [...]