Why a corrupt 18th century English governor of Bengal is at the heart of Trump’s impeachment

Warren Hastings was tried after leaving office too – and acquitted

The impeachment of former President Donald Trump may come to rely on precedent from a much, much earlier trial: that of Warren Hastings, the former governor of what was then the British colony Bengal, who was impeached in 1786, after he left office, for corruption. 

On Tuesday, Democrats kicked off the impeachment trial in the Senate in part by arguing that the Founding Fathers knew about this precedent while they were writing the US Constitution and understood that impeachment trials could take place after the accused left office. They even flashed an image of Mr Hastings and a contemporary Philadelphia news clipping.

"The framers knew all about it, and they strongly supported the impeachment. In fact, the Hastings case was invoked at the convention," Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, the Democrats’ impeachment manager, said on Tuesday.

They've also argued there's US background for this kind of proceeding, pointing to the 1876 impeachment of secretary of war William Belknap for a kickback scheme after he left office.

"Given the framers intense focus on the danger to elections and the peaceful transfer of power, it is inconceivable that they designed impeachment to be a dead letter in the president's final days in office when opportunities to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power would be most tempting and most dangerous," he added.

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Indeed, as the Farmers were drafting the Constitution in 1787, Hastings’s name came up specifically in reference to impeachment. 

Originally, some felt that rather than the final language of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, impeachment should only apply to presidents who committed “treason and bribery”. But George Mason objected.

 “Treason … will not reach many great and dangerous offences,” he said. “Hastings is not guilty of treason.”

President John Quincy Adams, son of founding father and former president John Adams, seemed to have a similar understanding, that impeachment could apply to those whose time in office was over. 

The Congressional Research Service also wrote in a recent report: "While the Framers were aware of the British and state practices of impeaching former officials, scholars have noted that they chose not to explicitly rule out impeachment after an official leaves office.” 

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The Hastings trial is resonant beyond its immediate legal importance, as it previewed many of the questions and dynamics that’ve come to define modern day impeachments. 

The trial, which lasted seven years before the House of Lords, was for a time the must-see TV of its day, with tickets for the case in the grand Westminster Hall costing the equivalent of $9000 today. 

The arguments in the trial matter today as well. Edmund Burke, the lead prosecutor and an influential legal commentator, argued that impeachment was something bigger and more philosophical than just a legal process, with “the principles of honour, the spirit of cavaliers to govern here; not the low principles of jurisprudence only”.

Meanwhile, much as Mr Trump’s lawyers have sought to do, those representing Mr Hastings argued strictly legal standards should apply, otherwise the process would play out “according to the strength of the party prosecuting or defending.”

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Eventually, in April of 1795, Hastings was acquitted and the public lost interest in the plodding trial. Time will tell if that’s where the parallels cease.