Can a President Be Impeached and Run for President Again
Old United States President Donald Trump was impeached twice. While the first impeachment occurred while President Trump was in role, the 2nd Senate impeachment trial began later his successor, President Joe Biden, entered the White House. The timing of this trial caused a big stir, both from Donald Trump'due south advocates in the Republican Political party in Congress and from observers on social media. Why impeach a sometime president, and why non pursue an alternate road to seek justice?
Why impeach a former president?
To answer this question, let'south dive into what impeachment is, how it'southward different from normal trials, and why most legal scholars retrieve that impeaching a quondam president is well inside the bounds of the constabulary.
What Is Impeachment?
Impeachment is a safety measure that allows the authorities to remove decadent, treasonous, or otherwise unfit federal officers from their positions in government.
Article II of the Usa Constitution specifies that the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the federal government may exist impeached for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." High crimes and misdemeanors are not defined, giving the legislative branch a not bad deal of latitude to decide whom to impeach and for what deport.
Impeachment is largely a cosmetic measure. In other words, an impeachment by and large removes the offending ceremonious officer from office. It does not punish them with jail time, fines, or other measures.
The process of impeaching a federal officeholder begins in the Firm of Representatives. The Firm of Representatives must bring charges confronting that person to impeach an official. Bringing these charges requires a simple majority vote. Should this vote pass, a Senate trial will commence.
The House of Representatives appoints impeachment managers who effort to convince the United States Senate that the private in question has committed an impeachable offense. To convict on whatever specific accuse, 2-thirds of present senators must vote that they discover the accused individual guilty of that charge.
Why Is Impeachment Different From a Normal Trial?
Legislative, not judicial
In that location are a number of differences betwixt impeaching a president and charging someone with a crime. For instance, the House of Representatives brings charges in an impeachment trial, non a prosecutor. Prosecutors are regime employees who work for the executive co-operative nether the Justice Department. While the Firm of Representatives is a democratically elected branch of regime that'south accountable only to the people.
In other words, federal prosecutors work for the current president. This means that a prosecutor bringing charges against a former president might be viewed as the new president using their political influence to punish a rival.
Though the House of Representatives might belong to a different party than the former president, the fact that it's a large torso that answers directly to the people helps make impeaching a one-time president seem less like an human action of political revenge.
Unpardonable
The president cannot use their pardon powers against impeachment. The president has the authority to pardon criminals past reducing or commuting their sentences. However, the Constitution is quite explicit that this power is ineffective confronting the act of impeachment. The impeachment process only removes a person from public office (and possibly confined them from belongings office again), which is not something the president can pardon.
A different burden of proof
Using impeachment ability is a rare occurrence, and it's not divers every bit clearly equally yous might call back. While each commodity of impeachment requires a guilty vote from two-thirds of senators nowadays to convict the impeached person, in that location's no clear standard of proof. Instead, senators can vote "guilty" or "not guilty" based on whatever standard that they see fit.
In normal trials, the standard of proof is quite well defined. In a criminal trial in forepart of a court, a defendant would have to exist proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which ways that whoever decides the case must be nearly 95% certain that the individual in question is guilty. In a civil trial, a defendant must exist guilty past a preponderance of the prove, which means that whoever determined the outcome of the case must be almost 51% certain that the individual is guilty.
Different remedies
Courts are limited in their powers. A trial court might send a former president to jail, fine them, or mandate that they perform community service. In most cases, a trial courtroom cannot remove that erstwhile president from public office, nor can it prevent that quondam president from holding future office.
Impeachment, on the other hand, can only do those things. Removal from office is the primary remedy offered by impeachment. Should the impeachment exist successful, the U.s. Senate may undertake a dissever vote to bar the impeached private from holding federal office in the future.
The Senate has held that this secondary vote merely requires a unproblematic majority. The Senate may not impose jail time, fines, or other penalties, however, so if the goal is to punish a former president for wrongs committed while in part, impeachment must exist supplemented by normal criminal prosecution.
Impeaching To Prosecute
The Justice Section generally does not prosecute former presidents. Part of the motivation behind the second impeachment of President Trump was to nullify this tradition and make standard prosecution of the erstwhile president more viable. With no impeachment, the president could merits that his deportment were shielded by the president'southward office in several means. Had the Senate impeachment trial been successful, information technology would be much easier for prosecutors to overcome this defense in court, every bit the Senate would take held that the president's actions were unlawful.
In this sense, impeachment often serves as the first hit in a one-2 punch combination against public officials who have committed crimes in office. Even subsequently they've left function, impeachment helps strip them of the protection of their former offices and clears prosecutors to begin building cases confronting them, allowing justice to exist performed.
What the Founding Fathers Wanted
President Trump'south 2nd impeachment caused many legal scholars to delve into the constitutionality of impeaching former officials. As it turns out, impeaching old officials wasn't just intended by the Founding Fathers, only it was the normal way of impeaching officials at the fourth dimension.
In fact, there was a slap-up deal of debate at the Constitutional Convention most whether sitting presidents and former presidents should be impeachable or if impeachment should be limited to only sometime presidents. This suggests that the framers of the Constitution created impeachment as the correct vehicle for lawmakers to use against former presidents who committed impeachable offenses about the finish of their terms.
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Source: https://constitutionus.com/presidents/why-impeach-a-former-president/