{"id":4361,"date":"2021-02-03T00:03:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4361"},"modified":"2021-02-03T00:03:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:03:35","slug":"republicans-are-giving-rogue-presidents-a-pass-by-redefining-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4361","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Are Giving Rogue Presidents a Pass by Redefining Impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“There\u2019s plenty of debate among legal scholars<\/a> about the validity of the Republicans\u2019 latest argument that only sitting presidents can be subjected to an impeachment trial, even if the House issued impeachment articles while he was still president. Examples exist of federal officials who were impeached after leaving office. In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached, tried and acquitted after he left office. In 1862, a federal judge who had deserted for the Confederacy was impeached and disqualified from holding federal office, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether these precedents would persuade the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump\u2019s second impeachment trial is constitutional is likely unanswerable. The only way to get the question before the Court is if Trump were to challenge a conviction in the Senate. Even then, the Court could dismiss the case as a political question that only Congress can resolve. Congress answered that question in the affirmative this week \u2014 presidents can be tried after leaving office, at least so long as the impeachment occurred beforehand. Moreover, it\u2019s hard to argue that the case is moot \u2014 or stale \u2014 because the Constitution offers a remedy that\u2019s still meaningful for citizen Trump: \u201cdisqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of the events of Jan. 6, the Republican consensus that Trump\u2019s impending trial is unconstitutional is chilling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would mean that first-term presidents who lose reelection can, with impunity, incite mob insurrectionists to attack the Capitol while Congress is counting the Electoral College votes. As Laurence Tribe tweeted, Rand Paul\u2019s argument \u201cwould give all future presidents two weeks at the end of their term to go on a crime spree without ever having to face the consequences in a Senate disqualification trial.\u201d By definition, there\u2019s never enough time between Jan. 6 and inauguration day, Jan. 20, for Congress to present and vote on articles of impeachment, transfer the articles to the Senate, swear in senators, subpoena the president, exchange pre-trial briefs, hold a real trial with witnesses and documents (which Republicans blocked the first time), deliberate as Senator-jurors and vote on whether to convict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where does this absurdly narrow interpretation leave us? Apparently, if you want to impeach someone for attempting to overturn an election by force, the plot needs to be successful and you have to wait until the first part of his second term to do anything about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine this would have made sense to the Framers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2021\/01\/29\/trump-impeachment-senate-republicans-insurrection-463642<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“There\u2019s plenty of debate among legal scholars about the validity of the Republicans\u2019 latest argument that only sitting presidents can be subjected to an impeachment trial, even if the House issued impeachment articles while he was still president. Examples exist of federal officials who were impeached after leaving office. In 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached, tried and acquitted after he left office. In 1862, a federal judge who had deserted for the Confederacy was impeached and disqualified from holding federal office, as well.<\/p>\n

Whether these precedents would persuade the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump\u2019s second impeachment trial is constitutional is likely unanswerable. The only way to get the question before the Court is if Trump were to challenge a conviction in the Senate. Even then, the Court could dismiss the case as a political question that only Congress can resolve. Congress answered that question in the affirmative this week \u2014 presidents can be tried after leaving office, at least so long as the impeachment occurred beforehand. Moreover, it\u2019s hard to argue that the case is moot \u2014 or stale \u2014 because the Constitution offers a remedy that\u2019s still meaningful for citizen Trump: \u201cdisqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In light of the events of Jan. 6, the Republican consensus that Trump\u2019s impending trial is unconstitutional is chilling.<\/p>\n

It would mean that first-term presidents who lose reelection can, with impunity, incite mob insurrectionists to attack the Capitol while Congress is counting the Electoral College votes. As Laurence Tribe tweeted, Rand Paul\u2019s argument \u201cwould give all future presidents two weeks at the end of their term to go on a crime spree without ever having to face the consequences in a Senate disqualification trial.\u201d By definition, there\u2019s never enough time between Jan. 6 and inauguration day, Jan. 20, for Congress to present and vote on articles of impeachment, transfer the articles to the Senate, swear in senators, subpoena the president, exchange pre-trial briefs, hold a real trial with witnesses and documents (which Republicans blocked the first time), deliberate as Senator-jurors and vote on whether to convict.<\/p>\n

So where does this absurdly narrow interpretation leave us? Apparently, if you want to impeach someone for attempting to overturn an election by force, the plot needs to be successful and you have to wait until the first part of his second term to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine this would have made sense to the Framers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1138,431,221,294,506],"class_list":["post-4361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-capitol-building","tag-democracy","tag-donald-trump","tag-impeachment","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4362,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4361\/revisions\/4362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}