Just to set the record straight, Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas is wrong when he says it is “unconstitutional to impeach a President after he leaves office.”
Marshall emailed constituents on Tuesday, adding that Americans should be “focused on bringing the country together and moving forward.”
In other words, forget his role on Jan. 6 to undermine democracy when he voted to oppose the Electoral College results declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.
We’re all for moving on.
But we’re also for holding people accountable for their crimes.
And yes, the Senate can and should hold a trial on Trump’s role in the uprising that stormed the U.S. Capitol.
According to the Constitution, the Senate not only can now convict Trump for his crime of provoking an attack on the U.S. Capitol, but also see to it that he can never run for a federal office again.
Republicans like Marshall argue that now that the president has stepped down from office, he is immune from prosecution because its punishment is removal from office. Marshall is correct on that latter point, thanks to the 2020 Election.
But the election wasn’t a Get Out of Jail free card and the Constitution — Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 — makes it clear that “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all impeachments,” whether the accused is still in office or not.
If the Senate decides to convict the former president of inciting an insurrection, they can then hold a subsequent vote disqualifying him from holding a future office. The first vote requires a two-thirds majority; the second, a simple majority.
EVEN WITH A clear path, it’s a big ask of Republicans. No president has ever been convicted in the Senate. If all 50 Democratic senators vote yes, 17 Senate Republicans are still needed to convict. That said, the more Trump digs in his heels that the election was rigged, the easier it will be for Republicans to cross the aisle. On the day of the uprising, Trump repeated ad nauseam the false claim that “we won this election and we won it in a landslide.”
Sewing distrust in our democracy to this extent is nothing short of sedition.
Whether Republicans have the gumption to say Trump’s words come with consequences is the million-dollar question.
This is not only about Trump, but future leaders who maintain they are above the law.
SENATE Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., intimates he is inclined to hold Trump responsible.
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said Tuesday. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
Sensing the public’s outrage over the violence, McConnell could (rightly) use this as an opportunity to reset the GOP’s trajectory away from Trump and his toxic brand.
