Almost immediately after news broke Tuesday that President Donald Trump allegedly suggested to now-fired FBI Director James Comey that he drop an investigation into ties between Russia and Trump's former national security adviser, murmurs of impeachment began to circulate around Capitol Hill.

But alums of the last impeachment hearing this country saw, that of former President Bill Clinton nearly 20 years ago, cautioned that any talk of removing Trump is premature.

“It's not going to happen overnight,” said Bill McCollum, a former Republican member of Congress who voted to impeach Clinton. “It's a long way off, if ever.”

Kicking a sitting president out of the White House is a complicated process, though lawmakers in the House can start at any time by approving the articles of impeachment with a simple majority vote. The process then moves to the Senate, which holds a trial on whether to convict the president of the articles. If they do, the president is removed from office.

But no president has actually been removed, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon. Here's why:

There's Not Enough Information

When House Republicans voted to impeach Clinton, it was only after independent counsel Kenneth Starr's in-depth report was submitted. Starr was armed with documents, interviews and details.

By contrast, that process is just starting with Trump. Late Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed an independent counsel, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr partner Robert Mueller, to oversee the Justice Department's Russia investigation. Congressional committees have demanded from the FBI and White House Counsel Comey's memos and any tape recordings of conversations with the president, and the chair of the House Oversight Committee threatened subpoenas to get those records if needed.

Even with these requests out, the attorneys said talks of impeachment are speculation.

“Thus far I think there's a great overreaction because we don't really know what the facts are yet,” said Bob Bennett, a partner at Hogan Lovells who represented Clinton in the Paula Jones case.

McCollum, now a partner at Dentons, agreed.

McCollum said the events preceding the Clinton impeachment were vastly different because of the sheer amount of information available to lawmakers and the public.

“But we don't have anything like that here,” McCollum said. “There would have to be a lot more than has presently been presented. We don't know anything other than what the press has reported.”

And, the decision to impeach is ultimately a political one. Though Congress can impeach the president for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” it is the majority party who decides when that's happened.

“I don't see anything now that I think would warrant impeachment and I doubt whether a Republican Congress would impeach [Trump],” Bennett said.

Impeachment Takes Months

Before voting on impeachment, the House Judiciary committee usually conducts an initial investigation, though, that's not required, according to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report. Lawmakers and lawyers involved also need to do some serious legwork to be successful in trial while maintaining credibility with the public.

The Starr report was released to Congress in September 1998. Even after issuing more subpoenas and gathering additional evidence, the full House didn't vote to approve articles of impeachment until December 1998. That's because they needed to be sure of what they were doing.

“We had lots of material to review,” McCollum said. “It wasn't just [Starr's] report. We had interviewed witnesses. You have to have all that first and you have to be able to conclude there was something.”

The House isn't done after it votes. As a lawmaker, McCollum helped present the impeachment case to the Senate during trial. House members, designated as “managers,” act as lawyers by presenting arguments during the impeachment trial.

The whole process can also be bogged down by the politicians involved.

Lis Wiehl, a former reporter and federal prosecutor, worked as the deputy chief investigative counsel for Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee during Clinton's impeachment. She said that as a young lawyer, she didn't immediately realize how much politicking can complicate the process.

When lawmakers are making decisions, there's a level of negotiation that inevitably happens. They obsess over how their choices will play out with constituents back home, and pay extra attention to how they talk with the press and in public forums.

“It's all political,” Wiehl said. “From being a lawyer on that side, it was an amazing eye-opener.”

Impeaching Too Early Sets a Bad Precedent

If the impeachment process were to start now for Trump based only on what's happened so far, Wiehl is concerned it sets a low bar for future presidents. And, as Bennett noted, it's unclear whether the president has done anything impeachable.

“There's nothing that I see from news reports that says, 'Oh yeah, that's impeachment,'” Bennett said. Though he warned that “the House of Representatives has great discretion in what they charge as impeachment. It doesn't even have to be a crime.”

Wiehl stressed that impeachment “has got to be taken very seriously.” She said that if Trump is impeached for his actions so far, it's possible adversaries of the next president could easily call for impeachment.