Assume that the Democrats take control of the House in the 2026 mid-terms. If you were Speaker, would you start impeachment proceedings (3rd time’s the charm!) on Trump? And if so, what would the charges be?
IMHO, the counts would start with:
Violating the Emoluments Clause by accepting the Qatari Air Force One for his personal use. This seems a slam-dunk.
Violating the Posse Comitatus Act by sending the Marines to LA. Also blatantly obvious.
then it gets trickier…
I’d love to see something about selling pardons, but it would be difficult to prove a quid pro quo.
Also, his dinner at Mar a Lago for his top crypto clients seemed like a solicitation of bribes, but difficult to prove.
Everything else he’s done – for example, appointing the most grossly unqualified cabinet in history, abusing his tariff power, abandoning Ukraine, babbling about annexing Greenland and Canada…just makes him the worst president ever but not necessarily impeachable.
It seems like a waste of time given the implausibility of conviction. If Democrats are returned to power, it’s because voters want them to do productive things.
The airplane is pretty weak, especially without an obvious and scandalous quid pro quo. The deployment of troops could be old news by then and nothing happened.
If I had to pick something, I’d do Trump coin and scamming his own base. That seems like something you could milk that may make his own followers uncomfortable.
With a republican Senate and president, there’s no path to being productive legislatively. About all they can do is call misdoers to account. But I agree with the general sentiment that impeachment is a waste of time…unless things get so bad that republican senators signal a willingness to convict. I won’t hold my breath.
There’s the Constitution, and then there’s what you can sell to voters, most of whom have no clue what’s actually in the Constitution.
But I’d also add the same things he was impeached for before, as well as espionage from the time in between his terms, and the felonies for which he was already convicted.
For the purposes of this discussion, let’s leave the voters out of this. Let’s pretend that Congress acts either because (a) it has a prayer of happening (ie, a majority in both houses) or (b) it’s just the right thing to do.
Interesting article! I may not have started this topic if I’d read it first, but oh well.
From the article, I missed some obvious ones: impoundment of funds, thereby usurping Congress’ power of the purse; and deporting people without due process.
Pardoning the Jan 6 rioters – while outrageous, I wouldn’t have thought it impeachable…but some legal scholars disagree.
But what has a prayer of happening is all about the voters. If we invoke the Emoluments Clause over the Qatari plane, for instance, and voters say “Huh? Getting a free gift seemed like a sensible idea to me”, then their senators are going to vote against it. But if we we invoke something that makes the voters go “That’s completely heinous, how can he get away with that!?”, then their senators are going to vote for it.
In my opinion, JD Vance is even more ‘evil’, and certainly more devoted to his cause (and obeying Peter Thiel who has his puppet hand fully up Vance’s rectum) than Trump is. Trump just wants personal enrichment, vengeance upon his enemies, and to glorify himself in some varied order depending on the time of day and phase of the moon. JD Vance would like to turn the country into Margaret Atwood’s worst nightmares. If there is going to be an impeachment it should be a doubleheader followed by removal of all of Trump’s Cabinet and at least a couple of Supreme Court Justices while they’re on a roll. Which…is all fantasy, of course.
That’s exactly the real world answer to the question. A simple majority is insufficient for conviction in the Senate. A two-thirds majority is needed. If there is a prayer of getting 67 senators to vote for conviction, then the country is in such bad shape that an impeachment process would make sense in ways we cannot imagine now.
IMHO, constantly impeaching a president, with full knowledge that it won’t lead to conviction by the Senate, risks watering down the seriousness of impeachment and make it seem more trivial.
I suspect the Qataris gave it to the Office of the President but Trump thinks he is going to keep it after he leaves office.
Section 1076 gives him an out. Albeit tenuous.
Maybe if he appropriated the powers of Congress in doing so.
I think what we may see is the lame-duck Congress authorizing all of this which is within their power to do so for most of it. For example
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
I’m not sure Vance actually believes anything. A few years ago he was an atheist and compared Trump to Hitler. It’ll be curious to see what positions he takes when he’s no longer tethered to Trump.
Blame Republicans for pulling that stunt in 1998, and repeatedly loudly discussing it every single year of the Obama presidency.
It will be whatever the people backing him marionette him to say, which is to say Peter Thiel and Heritage Foundation. But honestly, I’m not sure Vance would really be in charge of anything, and he certainly isn’t anyone’s heir apparent; Trump picked him specifically because he is so fungible and a supplicating toe-rag, not because he is especially politically savvy or has any original ideas. He’ll continue to be the same bearded mannequin that he is today.