When Can a President Be Impeached?

March 16, 2026

The Constitution sets out a specific standard for removing a president from office. Under the United States Constitution, a president may be removed upon impeachment and conviction for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Each of those terms carried a particular meaning when the Constitution was written.

Treason is the most precisely defined. Article III of the Constitution limits the offense to levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. The framers intentionally wrote that definition narrowly, reflecting their concern about how accusations of treason had historically been used in England as political weapons.

Bribery was also well understood in the eighteenth century. It referred to a public official accepting something of value in exchange for using official authority in a particular way. In essence, bribery means selling the powers of public office for personal gain.

The final category — “high crimes and misdemeanors” — is broader and often misunderstood. The phrase came from British parliamentary practice, where it described serious misconduct by public officials. These were not limited to ordinary criminal violations; they included abuses of power, corruption, betrayal of the public trust, and other actions that threatened the proper functioning of government.

The framers adopted that language to ensure that impeachment could address serious abuses of presidential authority, even if those actions did not fit neatly within the criminal law.

Taken together, the constitutional standard reflects a central concern of the founding generation: providing a mechanism to remove a president who betrays the nation, corrupts the office, or uses presidential power in ways fundamentally inconsistent with the responsibilities of the office.