Why the G.O.P. Argument Against Trying Trump Is So Dangerous

[Nevilledog]

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Laurence Tribe
@tribelaw
A helpful synthesis of the many reasons the argument against trying Trump in the Senate is both wrong and dangerous.
House impeachment managers carried the impeachment article to the Senate last week.
Opinion | Why the G.O.P. Argument Against Trying Trump Is So Dangerous
By Republicans’ logic, a president is free to commit insurrection so long as it’s at the end of his term.
nytimes.com
10:47 AM · Feb 4, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/opinion/trump-impeachment-republicans.html

As the Senate trial of Donald Trump nears, the defense is coming into view. It appears that most Senate Republicans will not defend Mr. Trump’s conduct around the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Instead, they will rally around an argument about the chamber’s constitutional powers and the supposedly dangerous consequences for our politics if the Senate tries a “late impeachment.”

This argument is built on two closely connected representations, and Senator Rand Paul previewed them in his recent constitutional objection to “late impeachment.”

The first, in Mr. Paul’s words, is that “impeachment is a tool to remove someone from office. That’s it.” The Senate lacks the power to try an impeached president, once out of office, to determine if he is guilty of the charges the House has levied against him.

The second, Mr. Paul and others argued, is that Mr. Trump is now a “private citizen,” and so any action against him could serve no purpose other than revenge.
So less than a month after the events of Jan. 6, the impeachment process might be foundering on the remarkable claim — one that some senators seem to have adopted disingenuously so that they can avoid a defense of Mr. Trump’s action and pose instead as guardians of the Constitution. It is the claim that a president can escape the consequences of egregious, impeachable conduct, and in particular disqualification from future office, so long as the Senate runs out of time to try the case before the end of his term.

This Republican argument wholly misconstrues the text, history and structure of the Constitution’s impeachment clause. It is a mistake to minimize impeachment’s broader objectives by suggesting that removal from office was somehow its only or primary function.

*snip*

[crickets]

1. K&R for visibility.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. RepubliQans have trouble with logic, when it suits them ...