So suppose Dick Cheney's impeached - does he preside over his own Senate trial?

Factual Questions
1

Hypothetically speaking - suppose for some reason the House of Reps impeaches Dick Cheney* for mopery, loitering, and other high crimes and misdemeanours, pursuant to Article II, § 4 and Article I, § 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The Reps send the bill of impeachment to the Senate for trial.

At the trial - the President pro tem is in the chair, then Vice President Cheney arrives, and says to the pro tem “that’s my chair - as President of the Senate, I’m presiding over this trial, pursuant to Article I, § 3 of the Constitution”:

The pro tem goes “but, but…” and Vice President Cheney says, “The Constitution only gives you the authority to preside in my absence, or when I’m exercising the office of President:”

“I’m here, and I’m not exercising the office of President of the United States, so get out of the chair.”

And, the Chief Justice doesn’t have the authority to preside. The only time he sits in the legislative branch is to preside over the trial of a President:’

So, am I missing something here? Presumably the reason the Chief Justice presides at the trial of the President is because the Vice President has an interest in the trial, being next in line, and therefore is disqualified by bias. But wouldn’t that apply in spades when the Veep is on trial? Any info on why the drafters didn’t provide that the Chief Justice would preside over trials of the Vice-President?

And, to alter the hypothetical slightly, could Cheney instead voluntarily choose not to preside, recognizing the inherent conflict of interest? If he’s present in the chamber to participate in his own defence, he’s not “absent”, so would the pro tem even have the constitutional authority to preside?

  • and look, this is just a hypothetical. I’m using Dick 'cause he’s the Veep. The hypothetical would apply equally to Vice-President Gore, or Vice-President Quayle, or Vice-President Bush, etc. This isn’t meant to start a debate about Cheney’s fitness for office, or Haliburton, or whether Scooter outed Plame, or whether Cheney and Scalia sacrifice virgin goats at the full of the moon. Kay?
2

I heard it was done at the new moon. After all, Republicans can’t stand anything to be full. :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, sorry, couldn’t resist.

As to the main point, the Vice-President would naturally defer out of conflict of interest to the President Pro Tempore. And at any time “present” in the chamber for his trial, he would be present only in his capacity as Vice President, not as President of the Senate.

This is the sort of thing that gets settled amicably politically, and that courts stay out of if they can possibly help it.

3

Cite?

I don’t believe the question has ever been answered. It seems obvious to me the VP would want to preside at his own trial – although, of course, there would be a political cost to this that the president’s party might not want to pay.

–Cliffy

4

I agree that the Vice President could lawfully preside at his own impeachment trial, but the conflict of interest would be so glaringly obvious that he’d be a fool to. The President, or the senators of his (or her) own party, would surely sit him down in a quiet room somewhere and demand that he absent himself. If he insisted, he would probably find many of his self-serving procedural and evidentiary rulings speedily overruled by the Senate, and this might very well form the basis of another article of impeachment sent over by the House. Only an idiot VP would insist on presiding over his own trial (not that we haven’t had a few idiot VPs… :rolleyes: ).

For that matter, the Veep probably wouldn’t be in the Senate chamber during the trial otherwise. Neither Andrew Johnson nor Bill Clinton ever actually appeared before the Senate when it sat as a court of impeachment.

5

Was there any talk of impeaching Spiro Agnew before he resigned? Or is tax evasion a non-impeachable offense?

6

As Gerald Ford once said, an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives says it is. Everybody pretends today that he never said it, but it remains true in a practical sense.

7

Shib, there’s no definition of what crimes are impeachable other than the vague constitutional phrase “High Crimes and Midemeanors.” The contours of the impeachment power and the analysis of that phrase are left in the hands of the House of Representatives – if they impeach you, you’re impeached.

–Cliffy

8

In the process of the interesting intellectual exercise of “what if” that such questions prompt, one should remain grounded in reality. There simply is no way that the Vice President would be “allowed” to preside over a trial of the impeachment handed up by the House. The text of the Constitution wouldn’t be relevant; the basic legal premise underlying a “fair” trial would.

Frankly, trying to discuss the answer to this question any other way is not much dissimilar from efforts to “prove” that Bill Clinton could run for Vice President. Other than as an intellectual exercise of rhetoric, it’s a waste of time.

9

Cite?

There are many responses one might make to this bit of supercilliousness, Big Whistle, but let me merely offer the following:

Welcome to the SDMB.

–Cliffy

10

Brilliantly apropos.

11

With the current Vice President, I wouldn’t be surprised if he DID NOT recuse himself from the service of presiding over his own trial.
I agree with other posters that he wouldn’t wind up actually presiding over himself, though.

12

A quick search of the Senate Rules provides for no prohibition on the VP presiding over his or her own impeachment trial. So it could theoretically happen.

Send your query to the Senate Sergeant at Arms. You could get a more definitive answer from him.

13

So did he say it or not?

It seems like it might very well be true, considering that “high crimes and misdomenors” is pretty vague.

Another hypothetical: If Clinton had immediately admitted to his sexual relation with “that woman,” would the House have impeached him anyway? What if he just said, from the start,“Yeah, it happened, it was bad, but it’s over,” or something to that effect?

Back to OP: While impeachment is a constitutional process, it almost always has had a political bent. The only exception might have been the imminent impeachment of Nixon, but we’ll never know if a Republican majority would have had the same liklihood of doing it, and it never got that far anyway. So I can’t imagine any VP insisting on presiding over his/her own Senate trial because it would just look really bad. It might even lead to more votes in favor of conviction.

14

Nothing says that a Vice-President qua President of the Senate presides over any impeachment except for Senate rules. Thus if the Senate wanted to make a rule that the President Pro Tempore presides over the trial of the Vice-President, it doesn’t conflict with the Constitution.

15

Wouldn’t all the usual natural justice/procedural fairness strictures apply: the rule against against bias and the requirement that nobody can be the judge in his own cause (nemo judex in sua causa esse debet)?

16

Of course it would. My point exactly. But too many people prefer to ponder stupid what ifs so that they can derive some satisfaction out of brilliant silliness.

17

He did:

Rep. Gerald R. Ford, 116 Cong. Rec. H3113-14 (daily ed. Apr. 15, 1970), quoted in Raoul Berger, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems 56 (1973).

18

Sure Gerry said it, as part of the Republican witchhunt against Justice William Douglas. But almost immediately after (in political terms) Watergate happened. That the words of the Speaker of the House could be construed as saying that Nixon could be gotten rid of for any convenient reason, when the White House was calling the whole affair a third-rate robbery, was enormously embarrassing to everybody. Even the Democrats - who liked Gerry far more than they did The Evil Dick - didn’t bring up that quote again. It didn’t really surface until Clinton’s impeachment loomed and it became almost frighteningly relevant once more.

19

:confused:
I don’t get it.

20

Then-Representative Ford was never the Speaker. He was the Minority Leader, since the Democrats held the majority at the time.