Convict Trump for "Insurrection or Rebellion"
Jan. 12, 2021 —
Bruce Ackerman, a brilliant constitutional scholar at Yale, has the answer. You can read it in the Washington Post, but here’s a quick summary.
Impeachment was only meant to protect the country from a sitting president, not punish the offender. So the constitutionality of holding a Senate trial to convict him after Jan. 20 is iffy. Moreover, the Republicans in the Senate could easily block his conviction again.
Fortunately, the Constitution provides a simple way that is actually designed to stop someone like Trump from ever running for office again. It’s Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, to stop Confederate generals from holding federal offices. How appropriate is that?!
NBC News Flash, Jan. 13, 2021.
Max Burns, a Democratic strategist is now endorsing this approach.
And it does not require two-thirds of the Senate, only a simple majority — which we have. Congress would simply need to declare that Trump engaged in an act of “insurrection or rebellion” by encouraging the attack on the Capitol.
There’s no way that impeachment can remove Trump from office, so this approach would do everything that impeachment could do, and it has a vastly greater chance of success.
[Ironically, the Democrats’ Article of Impeachment does mention Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. But it does not rely on it, and instead relies on their “Power of Impeachment.” So the Senate cannot convict Trump with a simple majority and will need 17 Republican votes.]
You can up-vote this idea by “Recommending” this comment on the New York Times. Also, I’ve now had word that Biden is taking this idea seriously. If you like this idea, think about sharing it — soon.
More from “Debatable”
The NY Times Opinion newsletter, January 12, 2021
Impeachment isn’t the only way to punish Trump
From a political perspective, the historian Eric Foner tells The Nation, the 14th Amendment is a simpler remedy than impeachment: Whereas impeachment requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate for conviction, Congress could rule a simple majority in both chambers sufficient for disqualification under the 14th Amendment. “It is not a judicial proceeding,” he says. “It’s a political proceeding. It doesn’t involve lawyers or trials. It is simply about qualification for office. You could have one afternoon of debate and a vote.”
In The Times, Deepak Gupta and Brian Beutler argue that Congress should use this power not as a substitution for impeachment but as a complement to it. “Make no mistake: This was an insurrection,” they write. “Republicans should be on notice that whether or not they face a vote on conviction and removal of Trump, they will at the very least be compelled to vote by a Democratic-controlled Congress on barring Trump from ever holding public office again.”
Ripped Apart
