There’s been a lot of talk about impeachment over the past few months. To prevent this thread from being too political, let’s say that Chicken Boo has managed to get himself elected President of the United States. Of course, eventually it will be discovered that he isn’t human, but in this case this discovery doesn’t happen until well after the inauguration. Since then, he’s selected a Vice President, secretary of state, secretary of the interior, etc.
So Congress meets to impeach President Chicken Boo. But isn’t everything that Chicken Boo has done null and void? Since he was sworn in as President under false pretenses, then I would think that anything he’s done since would also need to be undone. The Vice President that he selected (though human) is invalid - that job should go to the Speaker, instead. And the appointments he made should be fired and escorted out.
But I get the impression that isn’t what happens. Why not? Why does Chicken Boo get to affect the structure of the government, even if he’s impeached for reasons that existed before he was sworn in?
I would say it’s because that’s how the Constitution is written. In a situation like that, however, I suppose someone could challenge the validity of the president’s appointees, leading to a Constitutional crisis.
When Chicken Boo (a character I had to look up… I guess I’m officially old now) gets impeached and subsequently removed from office, generally all of his appointees tender their resignation to the new President. The new President can choose to accept or reject their resignations, but in the interest of political caution, pretty much anyone remotely connected the the ruse of the Chicken President is going to be shown the door.
De facto officer doctrine – basically, there’d be chaos if every act of government was subject to being overturned due to what might be only technicalities in an individual’s claim to hold an office.
Upon further reflection, the Vice President isn’t an appointee, he was elected. So, under the Constitution, he’d be the legitimate president should the President be removed for any reason.
Impeachment followed by removal from office doesn’t make the ex-President’s prior actions null and void, he was the legitimate president while in office as approved by the House. Most of his appointees could be replaced by his successor anyway. The VP isn’t an appointee, he was elected along with the president.
For appointees, many appointees serve at the pleasure of the president. So if after all the fallout, the new president doesn’t like the current secretary of state, they can fire them and appoint a new one. Some appointees need confirmation by the Senate. Other appointees like judges can’t be fired. Others are in a grey area, like the FBI director who is appointed for 10 years, but could in theory be fired by the president.
However, impeachment doesn’t render the actions of the former official null and void. So the appointees of the former president continue to serve, unless replaced. The laws signed remain in effect, the executive decisions remain in effect. To give another example, if a judge is impeached that’s not a get out of jail free card for all the people the judge sent to prison. The people sentenced might or might not have grounds to appeal their conviction if the impeachment was over misconduct material to their trial. But the judge’s decisions are not declared null and void.
It’s a bit like the difference between divorce and annulment. He would be divorced from the presidency, rather than holding that he never was president. And the cabinet would presumably put in fro forma resignations, although likely many of them won’t be accepted.
The Senate had an opportunity to review the credentials of the listed appointees, and apparently approved of them, which endows a certain legitimacy on them. If the appointees did something wrong, they can be impeached too.
Impeachment isn’t used to remove someone who is not qualified under the Constitution to hold the job. Of course, we’re not exactly certain how to remove someone elected and sworn who turns out not to be properly qualified because President Obama was, indeed, born in Hawaii.
Impeachment is used to remove the President when he/she has committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Everything the President (or other officer) did up to the point of impeachment is valid.
Impeachment isn’t retroactive; it ends the President’s term with effect for the future, but it doesn’t void acts that were performed during the Presidency ab initio.
But isn’t that the problem in this scenario? Chicken Boo wasn’t a legitimate President after all; he was a chicken the whole time. Sure, people elected him, and he took the oath of office, but it turns out that he duped the public into voting for him.
That’s true. Thank you for the correction. I always look at the VP as an appointee because usually the person filling the position isn’t named until after the primaries, so there’s no public vote to select them. But I suppose there are people who refuse to vote for a candidate in the general election if they don’t like the VP.
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
To give another example, if a judge is impeached that’s not a get out of jail free card for all the people the judge sent to prison. The people sentenced might or might not have grounds to appeal their conviction if the impeachment was over misconduct material to their trial. But the judge’s decisions are not declared null and void.
[/QUOTE]
That makes a lot of sense. So the appointees are safe, so long as the new President still thinks they’re doing a good job.
This also explains why they never have a “President for a day” award like they sometimes have “Mayor for a day” awards in small towns. Too much power and possible disruption of the federal government.
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq]
Impeachment isn’t used to remove someone who is not qualified under the Constitution to hold the job.
[/QUOTE]
OK, this is probably closer to fitting the terms of the scenario. Does the US Constitution have a methodology for removing a President who, upon later investigation, is determined to have not had the right qualifications? If impeachment isn’t what happens to Chicken Boo, then what does happen to him? Is it constitutional crisis time, or are the votes that got him into office just re-interpreted to have voted for his VP?
Each state can challenge the candidates before they put them on the ballot. After the Electors voted for him, the Congress has to certify their votes and can challenge them there. There were opportunities to challenge, and in this scenario they didn’t happen. After that, Chicken Boo is president and eligibility is irrelevant. The only course of action remaining is impeachment because retroactive removal causes more problems than it solves.
As I said in my post, we don’t know what happens. No one who has been elected to either the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency has ever been Constitutionally unqualified to take the office. And there can be no added qualifications beyond the simple ones listed in the Constitution; that’s settled by the Supreme Court.
Had it been determined that President Obama was not a “natural-born” citizen, we might have seen what mechanism got tried for a remedy. But he was a natural-born citizen, so we didn’t end up having a constitutional crisis.
