The process begins in the House of Representatives, where any member may make a suggestion to launch an impeachment proceeding. It is really up to the speaker of the House in practice, to determine whether or not to proceed with an inquiry into the alleged wrongdoing, though any member can force a vote to impeach. Over House Democrats introduced the most recent article of impeachment on Jan. The impeachment article, which seeks to bar Trump from holding office again, also cited Trump's controversial call with the Georgia Republican secretary of state where he urged him to "find" enough votes for Trump to win the state and his efforts to "subvert and obstruct" certification of the vote.
And it cited the Constitution's 14th Amendment , noting that it "prohibits any person who has 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against' the United States" from holding office.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats accelerated the procedure -- not holding any hearings -- and voted just a week before the inauguration of President Biden. When it comes to impeachment, the Constitution lists "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," as justification for the proceedings, but the vagueness of the third option has caused problems in the past.
The Senate is tasked with handling the impeachment trial, which is presided over by the chief justice of the United States in the case of sitting presidents. However, in this unusual case, since Trump is not a sitting president, the largely ceremonial task has been left to the Senate pro tempore, Sen.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. It is an oath that I take extraordinarily seriously. To remove a president from office, two-thirds of the members must vote in favor — at present 67 if all senators are present and voting. If the Senate fails to convict, a president is considered impeached but is not removed, as was the case with both Clinton in and Andrew Johnson in In this trial, since the president has already left office, the real punishment would come if the president were to be convicted, when the Senate would be expected to vote on a motion to ban the former president from ever holding federal office again.
While the Senate trial has the power to oust a president from office, and ban him or her from running for future office, it does not have the power to send a president to jail. Disqualification from holding office, a separate process, requires a simple majority vote, according to the Congressional Research Service. Trump's lawyers argued in their brief ahead of the second trial that the Senate cannot bar Trump from holding office in the future under the 14th Amendment because removal is a precondition for disqualification and as a private citizen the body has no jurisdiction over him.
Article I addresses Congress—the people's branch. And when the people's branch has spoken and determines that a president should be impeached and removed from office, that judgment may, or perhaps inherently will, include a judgment that the president is no longer eligible for federal office.
So if the House and Senate address the issue in the articles of impeachment—we will undoubtably be done with the offending president. The Framers of the Constitution may have been unenlightened on race.
But they thought of this one. You could easily argue that it can. In impeaching Trump, the House did its constitutional duty. If the Senate proceeds to a trial, it is merely continuing the process. And for the Senate to complete that process is not at all pointless, even if Trump is no longer president. The disqualification provision makes that clear.
The counterargument is also not hard to sketch. Once Trump has left office, he cannot be removed. Removal is the central goal of the impeachment provision. The argument for allowing the Senate to try Trump is far stronger than the argument for allowing the House to impeach, and the Senate to convict, someone who has been out of office for a long time. It is even stronger than the argument for allowing the Senate to try Belknap, because Trump was impeached while he was in office.
Still, the Constitution does not clearly resolve the central question; it contains a genuine gap. Someone has to fill it. The impeachment process has obvious political dimensions, and the Supreme Court is highly unlikely to get involved. Which means that the Senate is the right institution to fill the gap. Without offense to the Constitution, it could choose to stay its hand. Without offense to the Constitution, it could choose to complete the process that the House started. Cass R. Sunstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.
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