Is Impeachment About More Than Removal? Depends Who You Ask

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The question is at the center of next week's impeachment trial in the Senate, which begins Tuesday. Donald Trump's defense team says you can't vote to remove a president who is already gone. House Impeachment managers are prepared to argue that an impeachment conviction ultimately means more than that.

This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Pastor Allison Byrlean to Larry, California, and I'm about to start working on a sermon.
0:05.6	This podcast was recorded at 2.10 pm on Thursday, February 4th.
0:11.6	Things may have changed by the time you hear it.
0:14.5	Okay, here's the show.
0:16.4	Well, I hope this podcast gives her some inspiration for that sermon.
0:23.2	Hey, we can use whatever intervention we can get.
0:26.1	Hey, there. It's the MPR Politics Podcast.
0:29.8	I'm Susan Davis, I cover Congress.
0:31.6	I'm Dominican Montenar, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.
0:34.9	I'm Nina Tottenberg, Villilla Fierce Correspondent.
0:37.6	And former President Trump's impeachment trial begins in the Senate next week.
0:42.0	At the core of this case is whether the Senate has a constitutional right to have the trial at all
0:48.6	since Trump is no longer in office.
0:50.9	The Senate has directed the impeachment managers and Trump's defense team to come prepared to make
0:55.9	their case on this question.
0:57.8	Both teams filed documents with the Senate earlier this week previewing the cases that they will make.
1:03.4	Nina, sometimes I think about if the founding fathers had just been a little more specific,
1:09.1	we could prevent a lot of heartburn over these kinds of questions.
1:13.5	Well, they were not that specific about a lot of things.
1:17.8	They thought they were being specific enough, and I would have to say that the overwhelming
1:23.4	consensus among constitutional scholars is that the founding fathers intended to allow somebody
1:31.2	to be convicted, impeached and convicted, after leaving office.
	...

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