Fact check: No, accusation itself will not ban Trump from a run in 2024

Fact check: No, accusation itself will not ban Trump from a run in 2024

by

That’s not true. There are also no other claims in the tweet.

The tweet was posted Friday, two days after a riot by the Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters sparked a new indictment by House Democrats. As of early Monday, it had more than 181,000 retweets and 725,000 likes. It says the following: ‘For those who wonder if it’s worth it to accuse him this time, it means he:

3) lose the full detail of the secret service

4) loses his ability to run in 2024 “

Facts first: The tweet is inaccurate in several ways.

1) Trump would only lose his pension after the presidency if the House chose to accuse him and then the Senate voted to remove him from office; accusation itself, without removal, will not lead to Trump being denied any benefits.

2) The law makes it clear that presidents who protect lifelong secret service will never receive a $ 1 million travel allowance.

3) It is unclear that Trump would lose the lifelong protection of the secret service, even if the Senate voted to remove him and ban him from presenting.

4) Even a Senate vote to remove Trump will not ban him from running in 2024; for the Senate to ban him from the presidency, he must hold an additional vote on this question.

The pension after the presidency

Trump will not lose his pension if the House accuses him of his role in inciting the insurgency – just as he did not lose his pension when the House accused him in 2019 of trying to end the US relationship with Ukraine for his own not to use political purposes. Under the former presidential law, he would rather lose his pension than the Senate would vote to convict him and remove him from office.

Many ordinary citizens use the word ‘accusation’ to refer to accusation and removal. Therefore, we are not dealing with Costiloe for this common mistake, but the statement is wrong.

Presidents who have not been charged and removed are entitled to a lifelong pension equal to the annual salary of a head of an executive division. For Trump, like predecessor President Barack Obama, it would indeed amount to more than $ 200,000 a year.

Starting in 2024

Not a second accusation by the House or even a Senate vote to condemn Trump and remove him from office would prevent him from re-ruling, in 2024 or thereafter.

After two-thirds of the senators present voted to remove Trump, a simple majority of the senators present would rather approve an additional vote to abstain from the presidency in the future.

The Senate could not override the conviction and removal vote required by two-thirds of the senators and went straight to the ordinary majority vote for future disqualification, said Ross Garber, an attorney for indictment and political investigations, who teaches the Tulane Law School, told CNN.

There is at least some uncertainty about the issue of disqualification, as no president has ever been removed from office by the Senate and only judges of the future office have been disqualified. The language of disqualification in the Constitution is ‘disqualification to hold any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States’; Garber noticed that no court or Congress raises the question of whether the presidency is an “office of honor, trust, or profit among the United States” from which the Senate can indict an accused person. (Garber said he personally thinks the presidency does count.)

Secret service protection

Would Trump lose the protection of the secret service if he was removed from office? It’s not clear – for us or for two legal experts we consulted, law professors Stephen Vladeck and Josh Blackman.

There are two relevant laws that use different languages ​​about who applies as a ‘former president’.

One law, the Former Presidents Act that we mentioned earlier, specifically says that a president who is pushed by the Senate cannot count as a ‘former president’ in view of certain benefits after the presidency.

However, another law signed by Obama in 2013, the Former Presidential Protection Act, only authorizes lifelong Secret Service protection for former presidents – without defining “former president” in any particular way.

It is not clear what definition the federal government or the courts would use if it were to decide whether an accused and removed Trump should receive lifelong protection on the secret service. (The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment.)

In summary, the tweet was too definite at a point that is very much in the air.

Travel expenses

In the first place, Trump was not sure about getting a $ 1 million travel allowance. In fact, the travel allowance – technically, a security and travel allowance – is only for former presidents who do not receive lifelong secret service protection. A former president’s official confirmed to CNN that the former president they work for does not have access to a $ 1 million security and travel allowance.

In other words, under normal circumstances – if Trump had completed his term as planned and then accepted the lifelong protection of the Secret Service, he would undoubtedly be entitled to it – there would be no $ 1 million security and travel allowance for him.

The story of the tweet

When we called Costiloe to tell him that we were planning a fact check and that much of the tweet was inaccurate, he kindly said, ‘Tear it up a new one. Go for it, honey. ‘ He said he was ‘nobody’, a man who lives in Texas with diabetes and tweeted because he saw the information popping up somewhere on his Facebook feed and ‘it made me feel good.’

He said he was never sure the content was correct and was surprised that the tweet got so viral. He said he only had 200 followers on Twitter when he posted it.

“I do not want to confuse the world. I just wanted to make myself feel good,” he said. “It seems like a lot of people have felt good.”

.Source