Political Interference Quotes
Chase a Supreme Court justice at the time was a very partisan Federalist. The Senate was controlled by the Democratic Republicans. Randolph, then a member of the House of Representatives, orchestrated the impeachment of Chase because of his extreme partisanship. The Senate in trying the case had to decide for the first time what “high crimes and misdemeanors” the actually means in terms of impeachment. A number of the Democratic Republicans joined the Federalists in taking the view that however undesirable the Supreme Court justice’s partisanship would be, that did not reach the threshold of a “high crime and misdemeanor.” Chase was acquitted. In this sense this impeachment trial was similar to that of President William Clinton almost 200 years later. The behavior was undesirable but did not amount to a high crime and misdemeanor, Clinton was also acquitted.
In 1953 the Senator had proposed a Constitutional amendment that would severely curtail the treaty making powers of the President. President Eisenhower actively opposed Bricker and the right wing of his own party. The Senator was outraged. Despite Bricker’s complaining, the public and the Congress sided with the President.
The first Federal judge who was impeached and convicted was John Pickering of New Hampshire. Jefferson was not pleased with the process that the Congress had to go through:
This covert project — PBSUCCESS — to destabilize Guatemala was exposed by the Guatemalan government. To minimize the embarrassment in the U. S., the PBSUCCESS CIA staff asked headquarters to fabricate sensational stories to keep newspapers and the fledgling TV news busy and distracted from covering the Guatemala story that the CIA was trying to destabilize the government in order to bring about regime change. The CIA was prohibited by law from doing this but the agency at that time ignored many laws. It is not known if the phony stories were actually planted at that time.
