The Presidency of Donald Trump has begun - and he may already be setting himself up for possible impeachment proceedings.
"In terms of conflicts and potential issues, we have never seen an incoming administration with them on this level," Jordan Libowitz, communications director at the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Daily News.
"It's all uncharted territory."
Trump's bad behavior -the insults, the mistruths, the tweetstorms, the sexism, and all the rest - have been piling scandals upon scandals since the day he declared his candidacy.
But now that Trump is the 45th President of the United States, being offensive can't be his worst offense. Only a select few scandals would be big enough to realistically boot him from the White House.
The Daily News spoke to government ethics experts about the most likely paths Trump may have already taken toward possible impeachment.
What could Trump be impeached for?
There's a reason only two Presidents - Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1998 - have been impeached. (Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before facing inevitable impeachment.)
The Constitution's impeachment clause, Article II, Section 4, is simultaneously so specific, and yet so broad, that it's hard to put into practice. The Constitution says a President can only be impeached for "Treason, Bribery and other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
In other words, general nastiness - like, say, belittling the press or feuding with a Gold Star family - isn't impeachable. Nor is presidential incompetence; the Framers of the Constitution chose not to include "maladministration" in the clause, with James Madison arguing it was too "vague."
Treason is equally unlikely to bring an impeachment. There have been fewer than 20 treason convictions in American history, and none since the 1950s. Most of those were tied to revolts or wartime espionage; none applied to a President.
That means Trump would, hypothetically, only face impeachment for bribery or for another unspecified crime, either before or during his time in the Oval Office - although some constitutional experts say there's no precedent for impeaching a President for actions taken before they took office.
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