Impeachment Rules Second Vote Not Allowing President to Run Again

President Donald Trump seems to have trouble with telephone calls. Every bit his infamous conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy showed, Trump uses the phone to violate his adjuration of role, abuse his power and commit impeachable offenses.

The president did it again Saturday. He called Georgia's besieged Republican secretary of land, Brad Raffensperger, from the Oval Function and pressured him to "find xi,780 votes." Non coincidentally, President-elect Joe Biden carried Georgia past a margin of 11,779 votes, certified after iii vote counts.

Congress should now muster its backbone and launch a new impeachment inquiry. The president has driveling his part again, a "loftier criminal offence and misdemeanor" for which he was previously impeached. This fourth dimension, he used the trappings of his office and his presidential ability to attempt to coerce a country'southward highest election official to violate his oath and defraud his state'due south voters for the personal benefit of Donald Trump.

Why bother to impeach a president on his way out the door? This time, impeachment would not be almost removing him from part, but rather near disqualifying him from running again.

Impeaching Trump on his fashion out

The Constitution's Article I, Department 3 provides for "disqualification to concord and bask any part of honor, trust or profit under the Us" as a penalization for an impeachable criminal offence. And critically, while removal from part requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, disqualification is different.

Per the Cornell Law School Legal Information Establish: "Unlike removal, disqualification from part is a discretionary judgment, and at that place is no explicit constitutional linkage to the two-thirds vote on conviction. Although an statement can exist made that disqualification should even so crave a two-thirds vote, the Senate has adamant that disqualification may be achieved by a simple majority vote."

Such a judgment has never been an issue in the nation'south three presidential impeachments since none of those impeached — Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump — were convicted by the Senate.

Disqualification has been imposed equally a penalty in three impeachment cases involving judges. The first occurred in 1862 when a Tennessee federal approximate, Westward H. Humphreys, swore allegiance to the Confederacy and pronounced himself a judge of the Confederate District Courtroom. The Senate voted unanimously to remove him, but took a split up vote to disqualify him from future role. Since the Humphreys example, the Senate rules have required a simple majority vote on disqualification.

In 1913, an associate judge of the U.S. Commerce Court, Robert Archbald, was impeached and found guilty of bribery and engaging in business dealings with people appearing earlier his court. The Senate found that he "willfully, unlawfully, and corruptly took reward of his official position." It forever barred him from holding office by a 39-35 vote.

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During the 1936 trial of Judge Halsted Ritter, the Senate did not disqualify him only did answer the question of "whether a two-thirds vote or a elementary majority vote was required for disqualification ... by reference to the uncomplicated majority vote in the Archbald trial."

In the third instance of disqualification, Louisiana Guess Yard. Thomas Porteous was bedevilled in 2010 for taking cash from lawyers who appeared before him and barred from futurity part by a vote of 94-2.

These cases lay the footing for impeaching Trump to make sure that he never again holds public role. While no one is eager to put the country through some other impeachment drama, we cannot afford to ignore the president'due south latest effort to subvert American democracy.

Oath of office means little to Trump

Saturday's phone call left lilliputian to imagination. Trump's flattery, enticements, misrepresentations and badgering threats take no identify among those who hold office in the Usa, let alone amid those who occupy the highest part in the country.

Some legal experts are already calling for criminal prosecution for his acts, and he could well have committed both federal and state violations. Merely Trump'due south latest offenses are political, and then information technology is advisable he suffer the Constitution's political penalty for a offense against the land. And the pardon ability is unavailable to protect him from the punishment for impeachment crimes.

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Considering the president has repeatedly shown that his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Usa means piffling to him, he must never be allowed to concord role again.

The Congress should employ the Constitution's disqualify provision to register its rejection of the president'south deport and utilise the penalization that Alexander Hamilton described every bit an "ostracism from the esteem and confidence and honors and emoluments of (this) state."

Austin Sarat is associate provost and acquaintance dean of the faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Scientific discipline at Amherst College. Follow him on Twitter: @ljstprof

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/04/impeach-trump-on-his-way-out-bar-him-from-future-office-column/4125422001/

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