WASHINGTON (AP) – Advocates for Donald Trump on Tuesday went beyond the facts when they argued that there is an open and closed case that precludes the accusation of former presidents. The question is not settled, although the weight of legal opinions contradicts the allegations of the Trump team.
Bruce Castor and David Schoen addressed the Senate on the first day of Trump’s trial after Democratic House of Representatives announced the opening of their case for conviction. Trump is accused of inciting the deadly siege of the US Capitol on January 6.
Democrats overcame a procedural hurdle when the Senate voted 56-44 to proceed with the trial, but they have a tough chance of winning the two-thirds majority needed to condemn Trump.
Look at the arguments:
CASTOR, who quoted the Constitution: ” Judgment in cases of indictment ‘- that is, what we do -‘ will go no further than stepping down. ‘ What is so difficult about it? Which of these words is unclear? … President Trump is no longer in office. The purpose of the Constitution has been achieved. He was removed by the voters. “
THE FACTS: Castor ignored the full section of the Constitution on this matter in the conclusion of his opening speech. The Constitution further provides a legal consequence of indictment: ‘Inability to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit among the United States’.
Democrats argue that the purpose of the indictment of a former president, who can no longer be removed from office because he left it, is to hold him responsible for the uprising and to try to prevent him from holding future office. .
Castor earlier in his remarks gave the fuller flavor of the passage, but ignored the issue of future disqualification in his summary of his argument.
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SCHOEN, on the trial of a former president on a charge of indictment: ‘You have bought into a radical constitutional theory. … This is an insult to the Constitution. ”
THE FACTS: While Trump is indeed the first president to be tried after leaving office, making it a new legal area, it is not a ‘radical’ notion in legal circles.
Nothing in the Constitution expressly precludes an indictment for an official who is no longer in office, and there is precedent for doing so with the 1876 indictment of War Secretary William W. Belknap, which was tried and acquitted even after resigning his office. .
Belknap resigned before being charged, but the Senate still asserted its right to hold a trial, although it ultimately could not be convicted by a two-thirds vote. In contrast, Trump was charged while still in office; only his Senate hearing came after that.
The US Government’s Congress Research Service said in a January 15 report: ‘Although the text is open to debate, it appears that most scholars who have thoroughly researched the question have concluded that Congress has the power to extend process of indictment to officials who are no longer in office. ‘
The Constitution does not mention the conviction of a former president. It only says that the president and other officials will be removed from office on charges of and conviction for treason, bribery or ‘high crimes and offenses’.
Charles J. Cooper, a leading conservative constitutionalist, said in a Wall Street Journal report that “it contradicts the logic of indicating that the Senate is prohibited from prosecuting and convicting former officials.”
Laurence H. Tribe, professor of Harvard law, and others also wrote that the Constitution clearly envisioned former presidents in a Senate indictment. “If we come otherwise, the disqualification power will be completely erased from the text of the Constitution,” he wrote in The Washington Post.
If the Democrats call for enough votes to condemn Trump – 67 – the former president can then be banned by a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate of the future office.
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EDITOR’S NOTE – A Look At The Truth Of Claims By Political Figures.
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