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Explained: How Trump could be impeached again within days
While constitutional experts are divided on the possibility of Senate trial after president’s tenure ends, Trump could be barred from ever holding public office if the upper chamber convicts him on the article of impeachment pursued by the House.
Top Congressional Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have called for the impeachment and removal of US President Donald Trump for "incitement of insurrection" after he egged on a protest earlier this week that escalated into a deadly riot inside the US Capitol. Pelosi said that the House would move ahead with the process to impeach Trump for the second time if he did not resign “immediately”.
Trump could become the first president in the history of the United States to be impeached twice. In 2019, Pelosi took months to back the idea of Trump’s impeachment after some Democrats started pushing for it, which was followed by elaborate investigation and hearings. However, there are less than two weeks left for Trump to leave the office, with President-elect Joe Biden set to take charge on January 20.
Democrats plan to introduce an article of impeachment for Trump’s role in the storming of the US Capitol on Wednesday and it is likely that Pelosi would hold a floor vote without any hearings, given there is little need to investigate the matter as most of the Congressional leaders were in the building when the President’s supporters broke into. A police officer and four others died after the violence, which followed a rally at which Trump exhorted supporters to fight to overturn the result of the November 3 election that he lost.
The House of Representatives will vote on the article of impeachment and the majority of members would require to vote in favour to get Trump impeached for the second time during his four-year tenure. In the recently concluded House elections, Republicans narrowed their disadvantage but Democrats held onto their majority. This means the Democrats are likely to get Trump impeached if voting takes place.
The proceedings will then move to Senate, the upper chamber where Democrats gained the control after Georgia runoffs. In order to convict the US president, at least two-thirds of the senators have to vote in favour of removal, which seems highly unlikely as several Senate Republicans have argued against it. According to a memo from top Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s aide, the soonest the upper chamber could take up the articles of impeachment would be on January 19, reported BBC.
While constitutional experts are divided on the possibility of Senate trial after president’s tenure ends, Trump could be barred from ever holding public office if the upper chamber convicts him on the article of impeachment pursued by the House. Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, told news agency Reuters that the Senate would have the authority to vote only on future disqualification if Trump’s impeachment trial is still pending on January 20, the day when he finally leaves the office.
In the history of the United States, only three presidents, Andrew Johnson (1868), Bill Clinton (1998) and Donald Trump (2019), have been impeached so far but all of them got acquitted in the Senate. In 1974, the then president Richard Nixon had faced impeachment proceedings but resigned from the office before any voting could take place.
