Trump Is No Longer in Office, So Why Put Him on Trial?

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4.5 • 979 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. Senate is awaiting an article of impeachment from the House regarding Donald Trump's activities leading up to a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. Why should the Senate proceed with a trial for a President who has already left office? Gene Healy offers his thoughts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Cater Daily podcast for Friday, January 22nd, 2021. I'm Caleb Brown. We have a new president, sure, but the old one is still awaiting his trial before the U.S. Senate. But what's the point? He's out of office. It's over, right? Cato's Gene Healy discusses why the U.S. Senate should take this impeachment trial more
0:21.8	seriously than they did the last one. I live just outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The president
0:28.3	won the state handily, but even among the president's bigger fans that I know, they're ready for him not to be a part of their regular newsday.
0:44.3	Well, he's worked out a way to stay center stage even when he's not president any longer.
0:52.8	If and when there's an impeachment trial in the Senate, you will be living rent-free in our heads
0:58.2	once more.
0:59.3	Richard Nixon, after he lost the presidency, said, you know, you're not going to have Dick
1:04.9	Nixon to kick around anymore, but we're going to be kicking around Donald Trump and
1:09.8	Donald Trump-related matters for as long as this question is before the Senate.
1:15.9	The Constitution seems to assume that impeachment is something that happens to people who are in office.
1:23.4	And as of this recording, the president has been out of office for a little over two hours.
1:31.9	Is it constitutional to have a trial for someone who is no longer in office?
1:41.5	It is constitutional and it's been done before. That said, you can understand
1:47.3	why people are receptive to the argument that it's not. And that's not just Senate Republicans
1:56.6	who would like a convenient way to deduct the issue. But just anyone looking at the Constitution,
2:04.3	the text seems to assume someone that's in office.
2:10.6	It says the president and other civil office officers of the United States
2:16.4	shall be removed from office on impeachment for
2:20.4	and conviction of high crimes of misdemeanors, treasonabribery, other high crimes of misdemeanors.
2:26.6	So the text seems to assume that it's a sitting official.
2:31.5	And as you say, the president's not president anymore as of noon on January 20th.
2:39.0	But that reading, I don't think, is dispositive.
	...

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