Fox News Senior Capitol Hill Producer Chad Pergram said the sheer number of supportive politicians made it very unlikely, while the prospect of impeachment has caught a lot of media attention.
“The breakdown right now is 432 members [in the House of Representatives] … there are 44, count them, members, 44 members — one of them is a Republican — [Rep.] Justin Amash from Michigan — who is for impeachment,” Pergram told Fox News host Bill Hemmer in his “Hemmer Time” podcast published on Thursday.
“That works out to 9.8 per cent — not even 10 per cent — so when you hear all this noise about impeachment, they are nowhere near that number,” he added.
Pergram cited how when former President Richard Nixon faced impeachment in 1974, the House tally was 410-4 to give the Judiciary Committee broad authority to investigate him.
He suggested, however, that things could change as they did in 1972 and 1973 after Nixon fired his special prosecutor in the Saturday Night Massacre, alongside the Watergate tapes and battles over congressional subpoenas.
Pergram’s comments came just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., retorted on her members’ request to impeach.
While appearing on late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show on Thursday, Pelosi argued that impeachment would bring about a situation where Donald Trump might not face prosecution even after he leaves office because the Republican-led Senate’s acquittal would somehow prevent that.
“He knows it’s not a good idea to be impeached, but the silver lining for him is when he believes he would be exonerated by the United States Senate, and there’s a school of thought that says if the Senate acquits you, why bring charges against him in the private sector when he’s no longer president?” she told Kimmel.
Recalling that only 19 people have been impeached in the history of the Republic, Pergram said it was “very rare” for Congress to achieve a “successful impeachment of any sort.”