If he wins back a U.S. Senate seat in next month’s election, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown says he won’t back impeaching President Donald Trump. “I can’t speak for everybody else, but I would not support an impeachment of Trump,” Brown told The Columbus Dispatch. when interviewed last week. “There’s just simply no reason for that, no matter what happens in the midterms.”
Brown, who previously served three terms as senator, is free to opine on whether Democrats should impeach Trump if they snatch control of Congress from the GOP. But his declaration was ill-advised, given the specific role he’d play as a U.S. senator if Trump were impeached for a third time. By expressing blanket opposition to Trump potentially facing impeachment, Brown weakens his colleagues’ hand and undercuts the legitimacy of the impeachment process.
By expressing blanket opposition to Trump potentially facing impeachment, Brown weakens his colleagues’ hand and undercuts the legitimacy of the impeachment process.
Let’s concede that Brown’s sentiment reflects a tight race. He has been hustling hard to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted in a state that has spent two decades getting redder with each election. Brown has a four-point lead over Husted, according to the latest polling average of the Ohio Senate race, but he doesn’t seem to be taking that as a sign that he’s got the race sewn up.
Brown’s campaign has focused hard on cost-of-living issues, and his rejection of the idea of impeachment may be a sign that he wants to allay some voters’ concerns that Democrats care more about punishing Trump than alleviating the economic pain that contributed to the GOP’s political fortunes declining in Ohio.
But should Brown return to Washington, he would have no say in whether Trump is impeached. Per the Constitution, the House of Representatives controls the process for charging a federal official with high crimes and misdemeanors and can pass articles of impeachment with a simple majority. Senators act as a jury of 100 to weigh the case the House lays against the impeached official. Two-thirds of them, or 66 members, must vote to convict for the defendant to be removed from office — but none of them needs to be consulted before the House sends over articles of impeachment.
Republicans cite Trump’s previous two impeachments not as a consequence of his corruption but as evidence of a Democratic plot against him. “It’s guaranteed, probably on the first day — first or second day,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned in a recent interview. “Remember, they’ve already filed articles of impeachment in this Congress. And they’re raring to go.”
By preemptively framing any impeachment push as just another attack on Trump, Johnson is essentially promising that neither he nor his party will consider any evidence of wrongdoing against Trump that Democrats might gather if they are in charge. And Brown’s statement that there’s “simply no reason” for impeachment boosts that GOP argument.
While Democrats are reportedly preparing to investigate reports of Trump’s lawbreaking, self-enrichment and other offenses, there is no indication that an impeachment inquiry is an immediate priority for a Democratic majority. (Whether they should be pursuing impeachment is another issue.)
In each of Trump’s previous impeachment trials, Brown voted to convict Trump, but he was ultimately acquitted. After he was acquitted in 2021, in a trial in which Trump was accused of incitement of insurrection after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Brown wrote in a statement that the Republicans who voted against conviction “sent a message to our country and the world that violent attacks on our citizens, our democracy, and the will of the people have no consequences.”
Republicans have repeatedly tarnished the legitimacy of the one constitutional failsafe against an out-of-control executive.
Brown knew that most Republicans had predetermined to vote for acquittal before a single shred of evidence had been presented. But now, in declaring himself in opposition to the mere idea of a Trump impeachment, Brown puts himself in an uncomfortably similar position.
It’s important to note that Brown didn’t say Trump has done nothing to deserve impeachment. That would have surely alienated the stalwart Democrats he needs to turn out over the next three weeks. He also has a point that there’s a need to build an impeachment case, not in a court of law and that jumping the gun doesn’t help. Again, though, House candidates are the ones responsible for considering impeachment, not senators.
Brown may have thought his disavowal of impeachment counts as restraint. But there are ways for him to have framed his position that would have been savvier and avoided undermining the impeachment process. Republicans have repeatedly tarnished the legitimacy of the one constitutional failsafe against an out-of-control executive. If it is ever to be successfully wielded, then the impeachment’s legitimacy must be restored — but Brown disavowing it as an option during a spectacularly corrupt Trump administration can only have the opposite effect.
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