Fact check: Schiff can't be impeached, and there's no ongoing effort to remove him from office

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The claim: Adam Schiff is being impeached

An April 19 Facebook video (direct link, archive link) shows several clips of House members speaking in Congress.

"IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING! ADAM SCHIFF WILL BE IMPEACHED," reads the video's caption. "Brave Jim Jordan SHUTS DOWN Schiff."

The video was shared more than 8,000 times in nine days.

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Our rating: False

House members can't be impeached, but they can be expelled with a two-thirds vote. There are no credible reports of any effort to remove Schiff from office, and the video in the post doesn't show this.

House, Senate members can't be impeached, but can be expelled

Despite the post's claim, Rep. Adam Schiff – like other House and Senate members – can't be impeached. 

The Constitution outlines the impeachment process in Article II, where it says, "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

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But that process doesn't apply to members of the House or Senate. Instead, those bodies are able to expel their own members.

"The House can expel a member of the House, and the Senate can expel a member of the Senate," Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, previously told Paste BN. "In neither case does impeachment apply."

There has been only one exception. Tennessee Sen. William Blount was impeached by the House in 1797. However, he was expelled by the Senate before his impeachment trial began the following year.

His impeachment trial, the first ever conducted, "established the principle that members of Congress and senators were not 'civil officers' under the Constitution, and accordingly, they could only be removed from office by a two-thirds vote for expulsion by their respective chambers," the Senate's website says.

Schiff, a California Democrat who was a member of the Jan. 6 committee and lead prosecutor in former President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, is a frequent target of misinformation, There are no credible reports, though, of an effort to remove Schiff from office.

The video in the post doesn't support the claim either. It shows a brief clip from a House Intelligence Committee hearing held March 28, 2019, when then-Republican Texas Rep. Mike Conaway called for Schiff to resign as the committee's chair. Then, it shows two clips of Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, speaking on the House floor. Jordan doesn't mention Schiff or impeachment in the video.

Paste BN has debunked numerous posts that pair false captions with videos of politicians or cable news programming, a type of misinformation known as "false framing."