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There is a considerable amount of confusion over the subject of the impeachment of members of the Senate and House of Representatives, and it is for good reason. The problem arose when the House of Representatives impeached Senator Blount. See the U.S. Senate article:

1787-1800

February 5, 1798
To Arrest an Impeached Senator

When barely nine years old, the Senate confronted a crisis of authority. An impeached senator refused to attend his trial in the Senate chamber. Unlike the House of Representatives, or the British House of Commons, the Senate lacked a Sergeant at Arms to enforce its orders. On February 5, 1798, the Senate expanded the duties, title, and salary of its doorkeeper to create the post of Sergeant at Arms. It then directed that officer to arrest the fugitive senator—the Honorable William Blount of Tennessee (pictured).

A signer of the U.S. Constitution, William Blount in 1796 had become one of Tennessee’s first two senators. A year later President John Adams notified Congress that his administration had uncovered a conspiracy involving several American citizens who had offered to assist Great Britain in an improbable scheme to take possession of the Spanish-controlled territories of Louisiana and the Floridas. Blount was among the named conspirators. He had apparently devised the plot to prevent Spain from ceding its territories to France, a transaction that would have depressed the value of his extensive southwestern land holdings.

On July 7, 1797, while the Senate pondered what to do about Blount, the House of Representatives, for the first time in history, voted a bill of impeachment. The following day, the Senate expelled Blount—its first use of that constitutional power—and adjourned until November. Prior to adjourning, the Senate ordered Blount to answer impeachment charges before a select committee that would meet during the recess. Blount failed to appear. He had departed for Tennessee with no intention of returning.

On February 5, 1798, as the Senate prepared for his trial and still uncertain as to whether or not a senator, or former senator, was even liable for impeachment, it issued the arrest order. The Sergeant at Arms ultimately failed in his first mission, as Blount refused to be taken from Tennessee. A year later, the Senate dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction—and possibly for lack of Blount.

Reference Items:

Melton, Buckner Jr. The First Impeachment: The Constitution’s Framers and the Case of Senator William Blount. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.

Melton, Buckner F., Jr. “Federal Impeachment and Criminal Procedure: The Framers’ Intent.” Maryland Law Review 52 (1993): 437-57.

As a consequence of the impeachment of Senator Blount and the aftermath of the failed effort to bring Senator Blount to trial in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the Senate have expelled their own members rather than resort to the formal impeachment process requiring impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial by the Senate.

Many sources have since claimed that a Member of the House of Representatives or a member of the Senate cannot be impeached, but such claims are not necessarily suppported by the actual language of the Constitution. The Constitution authorizes the impeachment of any person who is a Federal officer. A Federal officer is arguably any person occupying a Federal office. A seat in the Senate is a Federal office, so the occupant of the Senate seat is arguabkly a Federal officeholder and a Federal officer. A seat in the House of Representatives is a Federal office, so the occupant of the House seat is arguably a Federal officeholder and a Federal officer. So, it appears the Congress has effectively disregarded the plain language of the Constitution by reinterpreting the authorization for impeachment in a way which creates a false impression of a lack of authority to impeach. In this way each house of the Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, were able to expel its own members without the cumbersome involvement or cooperation of the other house or chamber of Congress.

The resulting practice of expelling their own members from their own chamber of Congress has led to the perhaps false assumption that the Constitution did not authorize the impeachment of Senators or Congressmen. nonetheless, the language of the Constitution is still there in the Constitution, and the House of Representatives could attempt to revive the conflict over the power to impeach a member of Congress, if and when it found sufficient reason to do so. Imagine for example a case in which a bi-partisan 2/3 vote of the House of Representatives impeached Senator harry Reid, and the Democrat majority in the Senate refused to bring Senator Harry Reid to trial or brought Senator Harry Reid to trial and acquitted him when the required 2/3 vote could not be obtained.