Now That Trump Is Impeached, Can He Run for Reelection?

It's happening again.

Final month, in the terminal calendar week of then-President Donald Trump's presidency, the Firm voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for a second time, charging him with "incitement of coup" for inflaming a pro-Trump mob that attacked and briefly occupied the U.s. Capitol on Jan 6. Trump's 2d impeachment trial begins Tuesday, even though he is no longer in office.

So why would lawmakers bother with impeachment? One reply is that removal is non the only sanction available if Trump is convicted: The Constitution besides permits the Senate to permanently disqualify Trump from holding "any role of honor, trust or profit under the U.s.."

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has called for the removal of President Trump from function.

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If Trump were to seek the presidency again in iv years, he could be the prohibitive favorite in a Republican Political party primary. A December Gallup poll shows that Trump has an 87 per centum approval rating among Republicans, even though he is quite unpopular with the nation as a whole. Another December poll by Quinnipiac University establish that 77 percentage of Republicans believe the lie that Trump lost to Biden because of widespread voter fraud — a prevarication that Trump repeated even as his supporters wreaked havoc in the Capitol in January.

Disqualifying Trump from holding office, in other words, wouldn't but eliminate the risk that America's most prominent adversary of democracy would occupy the White Firm once once more. It would also make style for other ambitious Republicans who promise to become president someday.

How disqualification works

Though Congress has the power to remove public officials via impeachment, this power is rarely used. Including Trump, who was impeached in belatedly 2022 for pressuring Ukraine to intervene in the 2022 election, only 20 officials (and only three presidents) have been impeached past the House in all of American history. And, of these xx impeached individuals, only 11 were either convicted by the Senate or resigned their role later they were impeached.

The term "impeachment" refers to the Firm's conclusion to charge a public official with "high crimes and misdemeanors," the phrase the Constitution uses to describe offenses warranting removal of a loftier official. The House may impeach such an official past a simple majority vote.

Afterwards such a vote, the affair moves to the Senate, which will conduct a trial and make up one's mind whether to convict the impeached official (if the president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States shall preside over this trial). Convicting someone who is impeached requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.

If the impeached official is convicted, the Senate then must determine what sanction to impose upon that official. Nether the Constitution, "judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from part, and disqualification to concur and enjoy whatsoever function of honor, trust or profit nether the United States." Then the Senate effectively must decide whether but removing the official from office is an advisable sanction, or whether permanent disqualification is warranted.

Although the Congress may merely remove and disqualify a public official, federal prosecutors may still bring criminal charges against that official in federal court.

In all of American history, simply three individuals — quondam federal judges West Humphreys, Robert Archibald, and Thomas Porteous — take been permanently barred from belongings future part.

The Constitution is silent on whether, after an official has already been impeached and removed from office, imposing the additional sanction of disqualification requires a supermajority vote. In the past, however, the Senate adamant that a simple majority vote is sufficient for disqualification. Judge Archibald was disqualified past a vote of 39-35 after he was removed from office.

To be articulate, such a simple majority vote may merely take place after the Senate has already voted to convict an impeached official. Two-thirds of the Senate must first concur to remove someone from office before that official can be disqualified — a simple majority cannot, acting on its own, disqualify an official from belongings future function.

Even if Trump is bedevilled past the Senate — an unlikely event given that the Senate is still controlled past Republicans — impeachment could only cut Trump'due south fourth dimension in part curt by a few days.

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

The Supreme Courtroom has not ruled on whether uncomplicated majority vote is sufficient to disqualify someone from public role afterwards they've already been removed. Humphreys and Porteous were both disqualified in supermajority votes, and Archibald never brought a example earlier the Court that could have allowed the justices to rule on how many votes are required to disqualify a public official.

Nevertheless, at that place is a strong constitutional argument that the Senate should be allowed to disqualify an individual by a simple bulk vote, after that private has already been convicted by a two-thirds majority.

In criminal trials, defendants typically enjoy far fewer procedural protections during the sentencing phase of their trial than they do in the phase that determines their guilt or innocence. In trials not involving a possible death penalty, a defendant must be convicted past a jury, but the sentence can be handed downwards past a single judge.

A similar logic could exist applied to impeachment trials. Earlier a public official is bedevilled past the Senate, they enjoy heightened procedural protections and must be found guilty by a supermajority vote. Afterwards they are bedevilled, however, they are stripped of those protections and their sentence may be adamant by a uncomplicated bulk of the Senate.

In any event, overcoming the hurdle of convicting Trump will be difficult. If all l Senate Democrats hold together, they still demand to convince at least 17 Republicans to captive Trump. And the overwhelming majority of Republicans already voted to declare Trump's second impeachment trial unconstitutional — so that'south not a great sign for anyone hoping that Trump might be convicted.

The question for Republican senators, however, is whether they want to adventure having Trump every bit their standard-bearer in 2024.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/22220495/impeachment-trump-2024-election-bar-from-office

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