Can an Impeached President Run for a 2nd Term

It's happening again.

Last month, in the terminal week of then-President Donald Trump'due south presidency, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump for a 2d time, charging him with "incitement of coup" for inflaming a pro-Trump mob that attacked and briefly occupied the The states Capitol on January vi. Trump's second impeachment trial begins Tuesday, fifty-fifty though he is no longer in office.

So why would lawmakers bother with impeachment? One answer is that removal is non the only sanction available if Trump is bedevilled: The Constitution as well permits the Senate to permanently disqualify Trump from property "any role of award, trust or profit under the Us."

Speaker of the Business firm Nancy Pelosi has called for the removal of President Trump from office.

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If Trump were to seek the presidency again in four years, he could be the prohibitive favorite in a Republican Party primary. A December Gallup poll shows that Trump has an 87 percent approving rating amongst Republicans, fifty-fifty though he is quite unpopular with the nation as a whole. Another December poll by Quinnipiac University found that 77 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Trump lost to Biden because of widespread voter fraud — a prevarication that Trump repeated fifty-fifty as his supporters wreaked havoc in the Capitol in January.

Disqualifying Trump from holding office, in other words, wouldn't just eliminate the risk that America'southward well-nigh prominent adversary of democracy would occupy the White House in one case over again. It would as well make way for other ambitious Republicans who hope to get 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 late 2022 for pressuring Ukraine to intervene in the 2022 election, just 20 officials (and merely iii presidents) have been impeached by the House in all of American history. And, of these 20 impeached individuals, simply 11 were either convicted past the Senate or resigned their office afterwards they were impeached.

The term "impeachment" refers to the House'south decision to charge a public official with "loftier crimes and misdemeanors," the phrase the Constitution uses to depict offenses warranting removal of a high official. The House may impeach such an official by a simple majority vote.

After such a vote, the thing moves to the Senate, which will conduct a trial and decide whether to convict the impeached official (if the president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the Usa shall preside over this trial). Convicting someone who is impeached requires a two-thirds bulk vote in the Senate.

If the impeached official is convicted, the Senate then must decide what sanction to impose upon that official. Under the Constitution, "judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to concur and relish any office of laurels, trust or profit under the United States." So the Senate effectively must decide whether merely removing the official from function is an appropriate sanction, or whether permanent disqualification is warranted.

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

In all of American history, only three individuals — former federal judges West Humphreys, Robert Archibald, and Thomas Porteous — have been permanently barred from belongings time to come function.

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

To exist articulate, such a uncomplicated majority vote may only accept place after the Senate has already voted to convict an impeached official. Two-thirds of the Senate must get-go concur to remove someone from office before that official tin can be disqualified — a elementary majority cannot, interim on its ain, disqualify an official from holding hereafter office.

Even if Trump is bedevilled by the Senate — an unlikely event given that the Senate is still controlled past Republicans — impeachment could only cut Trump's time in function short by a few days.

Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images

The Supreme Courtroom has non ruled on whether simple majority vote is sufficient to disqualify someone from public office after they've already been removed. Humphreys and Porteous were both disqualified in supermajority votes, and Archibald never brought a case before the Court that could have allowed the justices to dominion on how many votes are required to disqualify a public official.

Notwithstanding, there is a strong ramble statement that the Senate should exist allowed to disqualify an private by a simple majority vote, after that individual has already been convicted past a two-thirds bulk.

In criminal trials, defendants typically relish far fewer procedural protections during the sentencing phase of their trial than they practice in the phase that determines their guilt or innocence. In trials not involving a possible expiry sentence, a accused must be convicted by a jury, but the sentence can exist handed down by a single judge.

A similar logic could be applied to impeachment trials. Before a public official is convicted by the Senate, they enjoy heightened procedural protections and must be plant guilty past a supermajority vote. After they are bedevilled, all the same, they are stripped of those protections and their sentence may be determined by a simple majority of the Senate.

In any upshot, overcoming the hurdle of convicting Trump will be difficult. If all 50 Senate Democrats hold together, they still demand to convince at to the lowest degree 17 Republicans to convict Trump. And the overwhelming majority of Republicans already voted to declare Trump'due south second impeachment trial unconstitutional — so that's non a great sign for anyone hoping that Trump might exist convicted.

The question for Republican senators, notwithstanding, is whether they want to risk having Trump as 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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