Someone had this posted on Facebook this a.m.
“Trump impeached, Pence becomes president. Pardons Trump and appoints him V.P. Pence resigns and Trump becomes President again. Liberal heads explode”
Yes it’s silly, but would such an outlandish scenario be legal?
Presidential pardon power does not extend to impeachment.
President cannot unilaterally appoint Vice-President. Needs congressional approval.
If a majority of the House voted to impeach Trump, and two-thirds of the Senate voted to remove him from office, highly unlikely Congress would confirm him as Vice-President.
No, because the pardon power does not apply in cases of impeachment.
Per the 25th Amendment, Trump would have to be approved by majority votes in both the House and the Senate. It’s very unlikely he would be approved by the same Congress which impeached and convicted him.
Wow, didn’t know that. Ignorance fought.
Also, impeachment (and conviction) would likely include a bar to holding public office again.
It’s theoretically possible that Trump would be impeached in the House, convicted in the Senate, and then removed from office but NOT punished by the Senate by the penalty of a bar for the future holding of public office.
If that happened, then there would be no legal bar for President Pence to appoint Trump as VP, the House and Senate vote to confirm, and then for Pence to resign.
But it’s unrealistic in the extreme. From the standpoint of real-world discussion, this could never happen.
We could as well imagine a scenario in which Trump is impeached and then the Congress passes the 28th Amendment, immediately confirmed by 3/4ths of the states, which says, “Just Kidding, Trump is back as President, with the impeachment just not counting, for reasons.” If that happened, Trump would be President again, but c’mon.
No. See the Constitution.
If he’s impeached and convicted, he can’t hold office, in the Federal government at least, and probably in any state or local government.
He can also be tried for any crimes committed.
The president can’t pardon an removal from office through impeachment but that’s not the case here. The congress can approve his appointment as VP, Pence could resign, and Trump will be the president again. And he could make Pence his VP, get impeached and removed again, and repeat the whole cycle. This is so absurd there’s no reason for the constitution to account for it.
Note that the phrase is that judgement shall not extend FURTHER than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.
This is not quite the same as saying that judgement must include both removal and disqualification. Theoretically, the Senate could say, “You’re out, but not disqualified.” Again, it makes no sense that they would draw such a line, but they could.
Then no barrier exists for the new President to nominate the disgraced former President as VP, and for the same Congress that just voted to boot him out to now welcome him back by confirming the nomination. (Except common sense, that is).
Finally, nothing there addresses state and local government.
Yup.
In all seriousness, I can’t imagine that Trump, having been president, would accept a lower position. It doesn’t seem to be in his nature to be subordinate to anyone.
For that matter, I’m pretty sure that it’d be legal for the House to impeach the President, the Senate to convict, and nonetheless decide to impose no penalty at all. I’m not sure why they’d do that, but they could.
in 1980 there was a rumor Reagan would pick former president Ford as his running mate but that went nowhere. Not sure there was any truth to the rumor. Maybe a Reagan adviser asked him about it and that’s as far as it went.
John Quincy Adams served in the house after being president but no way does that happen now.
Why likely? The bar from office has only happened on 37.5% of convictions.
There were extensive negotiations. Ford wanted a wide portfolio of responsibilities, almost a co-presidency. Reagan didn’t really like Ford in the first place, and decided he didn’t want to share that much power.
Amusingly, one of the negotiators for Ford was Dick Cheney, Ford’s former chief of staff. We all know how his vice-presidency went.
Pence could not pardon Trump from the impeachment effects of removal nor disqualification. However he *could *pardon Donald with respect to whatever actual federal crimes may have been involved or alleged, to spare him the post-removal prosecution, a-la Ford/Nixon.
That is evidently an opinion of the poster based on the circumstances of the specific hypothetical. To wit, that in their opinion, a Congress that gets around to the point of impeaching and removing Trump will also want to prevent him from trying to retake power.
I’m not entirely certain about that. If Trump is impeached for the crime of Federal Mopery, it seems to me that that would make his mopery a case of impeachment, and thus unpardonable in general. Though if there were some crime that Congress missed in their bill of impeachment, he could still be pardoned for that one.
Article 1 Section 3 (clause 7th):
“Judgement in Cases of Impreachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to Law.” (emphasis supplied)
I have a hard time believing that the intent of the Framers was that whatever other “Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment” arrived at by a court after impeachment would be unpardonable.
By the text itself impeachment is limited exclusively to a process for removal/disqualification from office for misconduct and it then is up to the prosecutors and courts to pursue and try a case to punish for the actual crime – which is their job, not Congress’. Double Jeopardy is not triggered and that accusation, prosecution and trial is a Judiciary/Penal case separate and different from the Legislative/Political impeachment.
Co-president?
It’s possible for the Senate to remove someone from office but NOT disqualify him from future offices. That’s what happened with Judge Alcee Hastings, in recognition of the inconvenient fact that he’d been acquitted in his criminal trial for corruption when the key witness clammed up. Hastings promptly ran for Congress and has been there since. The Senate could even ban someone from future office but allow him to keep his current one, silly as that would be.
That’s up to them. The federal impeachment power covers only the federal government.
Yes, but criminal law is explicitly separate from impeachment.