16 US federal officials have been impeached in history - here are the craziest reasons why

With lawmakers discussing impeachment more freely lately, it's worth pointing out that only a small handful of federal officials have ever been impeached by the House.

In US history, just 16 federal officials - one senator, one cabinet secretary, two presidents, and 12 judges - were impeached.

Of those impeachments, just five have occurred in the past 80 years.

President Richard Nixon, the only president to resign from office, was actually never impeached. He stepped down before proceedings had begun. The two presidents who were impeached by the House, Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson, were both acquitted by the Senate. No president has ever been both impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.

Many of those 16 impeachments occurred for interesting reasons.

Here are some of those:

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