If his foes really wanted to punish him, if they wanted to inflict the most terrible fate possible, they would simply ignore him.
#Foundation framer 2.0 trial#
There’s no doubt that the Senate trial will only provide more oxygen to Trump, in his self-absorbed efforts to garner attention.
#Foundation framer 2.0 pro#
If fairness to an impeached incumbent president, in the extraordinary circumstances of a Senate trial, requires the chief justice to preside, why doesn’t fairness also require the chief to preside after a president leaves office? Did the Framers believe that it was acceptable to be less fair to a former president - as many would say if Vice President Kamala Harris or Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy presided? The only logical conclusion we can draw from this dilemma, reinforcing the points made above, is that there is no constitutional warrant here for a Senate trial. Was it just a slip of the pen when the Framers wrote “shall be removed from Office”?īut the clause’s real importance is in the light it sheds on the fundamental jurisdictional issue of whether post-incumbency impeachment trials are permissible at all. So doing would violate a basic principle of contract, statutory, and especially constitutional construction that such writings should be construed so that no provision is rendered meaningless. In particular, Article II, Section 4 says expressly that such officers “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Trump obviously cannot be removed from office if he no longer holds it, which would render this provision of the Constitution meaningless. The constitutional debate is already underway, and those arguing that former presidents (and other ex-officers subject to impeachment) cannot be tried have the better argument. His great fundraising Wurlitzer will work overtime, as will his followers’ echo chamber, while the litigation plods on long after the Senate’s work is over.
Trump, we know confidently, will contest jurisdiction not only in the Senate but also in court. With blood in their eyes, however, impeachment proponents ignore the bigger picture.Ī critical unknown is whether the Constitution permits impeachment or trial of a former president. The real measure is whether the country will emerge from the ordeal better than when it entered, not how gravely Trump is damaged. Holding Trump “accountable” is not the only cost-benefit metric, or even the right one. I am saying we should be clear-eyed and cold-blooded about what a Senate trial and conviction would mean. Or that he has “suffered enough.” Or that we should “turn the page.” Let me be clear: I am not saying Trump is innocent. history have occurred in the past twelve months. Neither scenario is the right way to do impeachments, 50 percent of which in U.S. Like the first, it is too narrowly drawn (first Ukraine, now the Capitol desecration) and was rushed through the House on largely partisan lines. He got away with it once and could thereby reasonably conclude he could get away with it at will. Instead of deterring and constraining Trump, as Pelosi contends, the failed first effort, if anything, emboldened and enabled him. Last year, Nancy Pelosi said endlessly that Trump was “forever impeached,” somehow never mentioning that he was also “forever acquitted” by the Senate. Nonetheless, like Impeachment 1.0, the 2021 edition is badly conceived, poorly executed, and likely to produce precisely what the first round did: results 180 degrees contrary to the objectives that impeachment supporters say they want.
I have nothing good to say about Donald Trump’s meretricious argument that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election or Trump’s trying to steal it for himself by frivolous if not fraudulent litigation and administrative proceedings and intimidating elected officials at all government levels or his inciting violence on January 6 to preclude Congress from fulfilling its duty to certify the Electoral College vote or Trump’s sundry efforts to convert the Justice Department into his personal law firm (including trying to suppress my recent book, on the pretext that it contained classified information, which it did not). This article appeared in The National Review on January 25, 2020. But if his foes really wanted to punish him, they would simply ignore him.
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