Does the Consitution Say if a President Is Impeached by House but Not Senate Can Run Again

Trump impeachment: Here'due south how the process works

Trump became the first president impeached twice.

Erstwhile President Donald Trump faces an unprecedented second impeachment trial this week. Calculation to the historic nature of the proceeding is that he is no longer in office and the members of the Senate who volition decide his fate are among the victims in the Capitol siege, which he is accused of instigating.

The House of Representatives voted 232-197 on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for an unprecedented 2nd time for his function in the Jan. half-dozen riot and breach of the Capitol, which occurred as a joint session of Congress was ratifying the election of President Biden.

The extraordinary footstep of a second impeachment, which charged Trump with incitement of insurrection, took identify just days before Trump was set to leave office. Only two other presidents -- Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton -- have been impeached and none have been convicted.

Unlike Trump's starting time impeachment in 2019 (in which no Republican voted to impeach), ten members of the Business firm GOP, including conference chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., voted for impeachment and denounced the president'southward actions. Democratic Firm impeachment managers argued in a brief alee of his trial, which starts in earnest Feb. 9, that Trump bore "unmistakable" responsibility for the siege and called information technology a "betrayal of historic proportions."

"He summoned a mob to Washington, exhorted them into a frenzy, and aimed them similar a loaded cannon down Pennsylvania Avenue," the managers wrote.

While some Republicans have spoken out against Trump's rhetoric in the wake of the siege, information technology is unlikely that the former president volition be convicted because it would require at least 17 Republican Senators and all 50 Democrats to agree. Some GOP members have questioned the constitutionality of trying a old president.

Indeed, that'southward the argument that Trump's lawyers fabricated in their ain brief ahead of the trial, calling the proceeding a "legal nullity" and leaving the door open to debate the very claims of election fraud that some say sparked the riot.

"It is admitted that President Trump addressed a crowd at the Capitol ellipse on Jan 6, 2021 as is his right under the Outset Amendment to the Constitution and expressed his opinion that the ballot results were suspect, as is contained in the full recording of the speech," the president's lawyers wrote. The lawyers denied that Trump participated in insurrection.

Meanwhile, last week, some 144 constitutional law scholars published a letter in The New York Times, calling a defense force based on the First Amendment "legally frivolous."

Hither'due south how the impeachment process works:

The presidential impeachment process

An impeachment proceeding is the formal process by which a sitting president of the United states is accused of wrongdoing. It is a political process and not a criminal process.

The manufactures of impeachment (in this case at that place'southward simply one) are the listing of charges drafted confronting the president. The vice president and all civil officers of the U.Southward. can as well confront impeachment.

The procedure begins in the House of Representatives, where any fellow member may make a suggestion to launch an impeachment proceeding. Information technology is really upwardly to the speaker of the House in practise, to make up one's mind whether or non to proceed with an inquiry into the declared wrongdoing, though any fellow member can force a vote to impeach.

Over 210 House Democrats introduced the most recent article of impeachment on Jan. 11, 2021, contending Trump "demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the dominion of law."

The impeachment article, which seeks to bar Trump from belongings office again, besides cited Trump's controversial telephone call with the Georgia Republican secretary of state where he urged him to "find" enough votes for Trump to win the land and his efforts to "subvert and obstruct" certification of the vote.

And it cited the Constitution'due south 14th Amendment, noting that it "prohibits any person who has 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion confronting' the Us" from holding function.

Firm Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats accelerated the procedure -- not holding whatever hearings -- and voted only a week before the inauguration of President Biden.

The vote requires a elementary majority vote, which is fifty% plus ane (218), after which the president is impeached.

Trump at present faces a trial on the commodity in the Senate.

Justification for impeachment

When it comes to impeachment, the Constitution lists "treason, bribery, or other loftier crimes and misdemeanors," as justification for the proceedings, simply the vagueness of the 3rd option has caused bug in the past.

"It was a central issue with Andrew Johnson, and there was a question during Clinton's proceedings virtually whether his prevarication [to a federal yard jury] was a 'low' criminal offence or a 'loftier' offense," Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the Academy of North Carolina who authored a book on the impeachment process, told ABC News.

According to Suzanna Sherry, a police professor at Vanderbilt Academy who specializes in constitutional police, "nobody knows" what is specifically included or not included in the Constitution's broad definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

"It's only happened twice and then the full general thought is that information technology means whatever the House and the Senate think it means," Sherry said before Trump's starting time impeachment, and even if the House approves the commodity or articles of impeachment, the senators tin cull to vote confronting the articles if they feel they are not appropriate.

Where does the Senate come in?

The Senate is tasked with treatment the impeachment trial, which is presided over past the chief justice of the Us in the instance of sitting presidents. Yet, in this unusual case, since Trump is not a sitting president, the largely ceremonial chore has been left to the Senate pro tempore, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chamber's most senior member of the bulk party.

"The president pro tempore has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents," Leahy said in a statement in Jan. "When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes an additional special oath to do impartial justice co-ordinate to the Constitution and the laws. It is an oath that I have extraordinarily seriously."

To remove a president from office, 2-thirds of the members must vote in favor – at present 67 if all 100 senators are present and voting.

If the Senate fails to captive, a president is considered impeached simply is not removed, as was the case with both Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868. In Johnson'due south instance, the Senate brutal i vote short of removing him from part on all 3 counts.

In this trial, since the president has already left function, the existent punishment would come up if the president were to be convicted, when the Senate would exist expected to vote on a motion to ban the former president from ever belongings federal part again.

While the Senate trial has the power to oust a president from part, and ban him or her from running for futurity role, it does non have the power to send a president to jail. Disqualification from property function, a separate process, requires a elementary bulk vote, according to the Congressional Research Service.

"The worst that can happen is that he is removed from role, that's the sole penalization," Sherry said of sitting presidents.

Trump'south lawyers argued in their brief ahead of the second trial that the Senate cannot bar Trump from holding part in the future under the 14th Subpoena because removal is a precondition for disqualification and as a private citizen the body has no jurisdiction over him.

That said, a president tin can face criminal charges at a later betoken. Sherry points out that in the Constitution "the party convicted shall all the same be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, co-ordinate to law."

In a case in which a president was actually removed from office, the vice president would assume office under the 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967. Then the new president would nominate a new vice president who would accept to be confirmed by a majority of both houses of Congress.

What does an impeachment vote mean for a sitting president and for a former president?

A president tin continue governing fifty-fifty subsequently he or she has been impeached past the House of Representatives.

Trump continued to govern after his impeachment in December 2019, and of course, ran for reelection in 2020. After Clinton was impeached on December. xix, 1998, he finished out his second term, which ended in January 2001, during which time he was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial. While Clinton continued governing, and the impeachment had no legal or official impact, his legacy is marred by the proceeding.

Past presidential impeachments

The House voted to impeach Trump on December. 18, 2019, on 2 articles of impeachment, one for abuse of power and one for obstacle of justice, in connectedness with his alleged quid pro quo phone call with the Ukrainian president.

Post-obit a three-week trial, the Republican controlled Senate acquitted Trump on February. v, 2020, with just 1 Republican -- Hand Romney of Utah -- voting to convict.

Johnson faced impeachment in 1868 after clashing with the Republican-led Firm over the "rights of those who had been freed from slavery," although firing his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, who was backed by the Republicans, led to the impeachment attempt. The articles of impeachment centered on the Stanton result, co-ordinate to the Senate.

Clinton, whose impeachment was connected to the cover-up of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky while in office, was 22 votes abroad from reaching the necessary number of votes to convict in the Senate.

Richard Nixon faced iii manufactures of impeachment related to the Watergate scandal, in which he allegedly obstructed the investigation and helped cover upward the crimes surrounding the pause-in.

But he didn't let the process get whatsoever farther, resigning before the House could impeach him.

Editor'due south Note: This story was originally published in 2017 and has been updated periodically.

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Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/impeachment-process-works/story?id=51202880

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