Once Republicans do it enough times, that is the viewpoint that will register with voters: “Impeachment has become nothing but a boorish political weapon. It is not being done in good faith.”
In fact, I could envision a Republican-held House trying to make Biden or Kamala the first president to be impeached 3 times, so as to surpass Trump’s record of 2.
Ah, well, I agree there. Just another norm waiting to be busted, I guess. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.
If the majority of people in this country (even the majority of people who are allowed to vote) were Republicans this wouldn’t be an issue.
But this isn’t the case. The Republican party has to convince some people who aren’t automatic Republicans to make an actual decision to vote for Republican candidates. And there are limits to how much you can bullshit these people.
So the automatic Republicans believed Trump was an innocent man who was wrongfully accused. But the independent voters will say “You know, I saw those tapes. All those people were waving Trump flags and wearing Trump hats. And Trump did give that speech to them telling them to fight like hell and march on the capitol. I think he was encouraging those rioters on. I kind of feel the Democrats had a good point.”
The Republican party doesn’t want to go too far and get on the wrong side of this issue.
To be fair, many Senators follow the tradition of voting for acquittal if the person is already out of office.
Is that true?
It’s my perception.
Tradition? It happened once. In 1876.
Those Senators might as well have claimed they followed the tradition of not convicting people named Donald.
We’ve gone over this with both Clinton and Trump. An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House says it is.
What about Delahay, English and Kent. You forgot those. You could even include Blount in there but there was the added issue of if a legislative officer could even be impeached so it is unclear how many voted for lack of jurisdiction based on him being out of the Senate and how many voted based on him having been in the Legislature.
I see @Little_Nemo responded as well, but what tradition are you speaking about? I only recall ever hearing of a handful of precedents regarding impeachment of individuals that no longer held the office they were being removed from, but never heard that it was some sort of well-established precedent.
I would love to hear more if you have some background here. I admit to having been torn about it as well, since it would open up long-gone administrations to retributive “justice”. But I was convinced by the House managers that since the crimes in question occurred so near the end of Trump’s term that clearly the founders would not have believed that impeachment and removal were rendered moot.
My primary point was that there were likely enough Senators to vote for removal if Trump were still in office, or at least close to that number. Which means that the number of Senators that would have to be replaced in order to convict VP Harris would be a huge number - something like 20 or so. It is impossible (absent truly impeachable offenses, of course, but Graham wasn’t stipulating that).
Delahay was never sent to the Senate, so could not be a precedent for Senators voting to acquit.
Blount is unclear, and was in the 18th century. If anything it means a Senator can’t be impeached, so also no precedent for a POTUS/VP who clearly can be impeached.
I can’t find anything on English and Kent - links would be helpful.
George English and Samuel Kent were judges. The House impeached English in 1926 and Kent in 2009 and sent both their cases to the Senate to be tried. Both men resigned. In both cases, the House requested that the Senate withdraw the impeachments without holding a hearing. The Senate did so.
Mark Delahay’s impeachment was brought up. One of the charges against him was that he drank too much. Admittedly he was also charged with pocketing the fines he imposed.
Thanks. I found that shortly after I posted (Googling for “English impeachment” and “Kent impeachment” was difficult but Wikipedia had a nice list were I found them).
Neither one is at all relevant to the notion of that some Senators felt bound by precedent, since in the Trump impeachment the House did not withdraw the charges.
I feel the more relevant precedent is that in both 1876 and 2021 the Senate was asked to conduct an impeachment hearing on somebody who had left office. In both cases, the issue arose of whether an official can be tried for impeachment after leaving office. And in both cases, the Senate voted on the issue and decided that it was constitutional. So the issue has been settled - twice.
If a Senator feels a person isn’t guilty of the charges then they can vote to acquit him. But they should not hide behind the false claim that they lack the authority to try the person.
The Delahay case is interesting. It never went to the Senate and from what I’ve read it is unclear if the House thought they couldn’t impeach someone who had resigned OR if they thought the Senate would not convict because he had resigned. Think to Nixon’s situation; I think they were very close. This was before Belknap’s impeachment and I think it influenced his decision to avoid a trial by resigning - which was an argument his team used. It’s nebulous enough that I may be right, Little Nemo may be right or it is somewhere in the middle but it is a fact that Belknap thought he was immune from trial by resigning and the Delahay case was only three years prior so still fresh in everyone’s mind.
It is officially NOT a precedent although some Senators treat it as such. The only time it was debated was in the case of Secretary Belknap (the case Little Nemo alluded to). The Senate then affirmed that it did have jurisdiction because it could rule that the person never hold office again although over 40% of the Senators voted against that motion. A third of the Senators voted for acquittal specifically because Belknap had already resigned.
So then we have the question of Judge English. Because he resigned, the House passed a resolution to request the Senate to stop the trial. Rather than blindly accepting this, Sens. Coleman Blease (D-SC) and Clarence Dill (D-WA) spoke against the dismissal. It is true that many respected the House’s request to withdraw the impeachment but some did so saying they disagreed with withdrawing the impeachment because of the resignation that is simply resigning should not immune someone from trial. But then you have Sen William King (D-UT) that agreed that a trial for someone already out of office should not proceed and even alludes to the non-trial of Judge Delahay as some sort of precedence for this. The idea of not trying someone who has left office was also mentioned by Sen. Duncun Fletcher (D-FL) and Sen. William Borah (R-ID) although they qualified it - Fletcher by saying this should not be a precedent and Borah effectively saying they could only disqualify him from a future office so what’s the point of the trial? (disqualification from office is rare). It would be disingenuous to think that all 90 that voted for the motion did so since they thought someone who resigned could not be put on trial but we do have a record of three that did and one that felt it was a precedence. At the very least, that was 90 out of 96 Senators that agreed with the House to not put on the trial because THEY (the House) did not want the trial to occur because of the resignation.
In the Samuel Kent trial the House sent a request for the Senate to stop the trial because of Kent’s resignation. There was no debate but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made this statement
Mr. President, I have conferred with the distinguished Republican leader, Mr. MCCONNELL, and with the distinguished Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Impeachment Trial Committee on the Articles Against Judge Samuel B. Kent appointed by the Senate, the Senator from Missouri, Mrs. MCCASKILL, and the Senator from Florida, Mr. MARTINEZ. All are in agreement that, with the resignation of Judge Kent, the purposes of the House’s prosecution of the Articles of Impeachment against Judge Kent have been achieved. Judge Kent is no longer serving on the Federal bench, and he has ceased drawing his judicial salary. It is agreed that no useful purpose would now be accomplished by proceeding further with the impeachment proceedings against Judge Kent.
Although this is not an acquittal per se, it is at least four Senators agreeing not to try Judge Kent specifically because he had already resigned. We cannot extrapolate that other Senators agreed with this thinking - some may have felt similar to those in the English case that if the House wanted to drop the charges that they should respect that although they may have wanted the trial and even voted guilty. And I need to point out that in both the English and Kent trials, the Senate could have proceeded if they chose to.
So again it is not a precedent and under Senate Rules it is the antithesis of the rule; however I think I have shown it has developed into a tradition that some Senators adhere to to not put on trial (or if on trial - vote to acquit) someone who has resigned. And I do not claim it is a large number of Senators. As I showed the decision is based on the House’s desire to stop the trial because of the resignation but it cannot be denied that for whatever reason individual Senators choose that except for 55% of them back in 1876, they are loathe to put on trial someone already out of office.
I was writing up my cites as you posted this.
You say the Senate has an established rule that they can put on trial someone that has already left office. I agree with you but your fallacy is that every Senator agrees with that. That is simply not true. When it came to a vote in 1876 to establish that rule almost 45% of the Senators disagreed. And despite it being a rule, 1/3 of them admitted they voted for acquittal even though he was guilty because he had resigned. I can point out at least one Senator in the Judge English case that specifically said that a person out of office cannot be tried (despite the rule) and claimed it as a precedence. Another agreed with him although said all trials had to be on a case-by-case basis and a third kind of agreed in cases where removal from office wouldn’t happen.
You say a Senator should only vote due to guilt. I agree but your fallacy is that all Senators actually vote using that criteria. Let’s go to the President Clinton trial. Do you believe that all of the Democrats that voted for acquittal truly believe he was innocent of the crime? Is it possible some had other reasons to vote for acquittal? What about the Republicans voting to acquit President Trump. Do you believe all of them thought he was innocent of the crimes?
So even though it is a rule and even though Senators have a duty to vote on the facts, that in no way prevents Senators from voting for idiosyncratic reasons, whether it be along party lines, a form of jury-nullification or because of some ill-conceived tradition that they choose to respect.
First, just because the House withdraws the charges doesn’t mean the trial is over like it would if a DA dropped the charges. It is on a motion by a Senator to dismiss the charges and it can be debated and although it has never happened, the Senate could reject the motion and the trial would continue. The debate (technically not but in actuality was) on Judge English is most illuminating. Despite the final vote being 90-6 there were a lot of different viewpoints expressed and some Senators did claim that it was improper to put someone on trial that had resigned. I admit it is a leap to assume these Senators would have voted to acquit but I juxtaposed their statements with other Senators who agreed to dismissed the charges but still felt that Judge English should have been put on trial and if guilty, convicted despite his resignation. With Judge Kent there was no debate but there was a decision by the Senate that since he had resigned then why hold a trial. I would argue that this is equivalent to acquitting Judge Kent although some may (will) argue that it is not an acquittal since he was never put on trial. My counter was that they made the decision to not hold the trial and find him guilty specifically because he resigned so is there really a difference.
The idea that any Republican didn’t convict solely because Trump was out of office is shown to be false because not a single one insisted on having the trial before he left office.
Impeachment is not decided at the court level, as it is a political question. That means the Senate sets its own rules. So the rules are what the Senate says they are. And the attempt to say the whole thing was unconstitutional was outvoted, so it was constitutional.
You also can’t telle that Republicans who openly supported Trump followed any precedent. All of the ones who were known to put principle over party voted to convict. And, despite Democrats allowing people to vote on principle, not a one voted against conviction.
Thus I do not see the point of entertaining the idea that anyone legititely thought it was impossible to convict Trump because it was out of office. They didn’t, and trying to find some way they could be telling the truth is just furthering their ass-covering rhetoric.
It’s like how I don’t get when people try to find that way that the person who was being racist might not actually be racist.
Good thing that’s NOT what I said. I never said they couldn’t convict someone already out of office. That was established with the Belknap trial and in the English trial some Senators specifically said there should be a trial for someone out of office that committed impeachable crimes while in office.
What I said was there have been cases where Senators voted to acquit (or in other cases vote to dismiss the charges) because they believe there is a tradition in not convicting someone who has already resigned from office. Does that tradition really exist? I believe it was best expressed by Senator Fletcher from Florida who agreed with the idea but still maintained that it should be addressed on a case-by-case basis.