The debate among members of Congress is now whether to push for the resolution early this week - as the impeachment trial is first starting - or towards the end, once evidence against the former president has been presented and acquittal is still assured. “I know there was some concern about it being a bill of attainder, but I’m not concerned about that,” said Cohen, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, “because what he did was the most horrific thing that a president of the United States has ever done to this country.”
The Constitution does not allow Congress to punish an individual over a crime without due process or a trial - a process referred to in the founding document as a “bill of attainder.” Democratic lawyers have warned members of Congress that any move to bar Trump from holding office without conviction at an impeachment trial could provide him with a strong constitutional argument in any future court challenge. Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Wasserman Schultz, among others. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Kaine, as well as Reps. Some of the scholars, including Ackerman, have helped draft the resolution, engaging in late-night calls with congressional staff from the offices of Democratic Sens. The three conservative justices appointed to the Supreme Court by Trump would likely read this statute as it was originally intended and support that the Congress is on sound legal footing, Ackerman said.
“The decisive precedent was established by Congress in 1869 when it implemented Section 3 through a Joint Resolution to disqualify all Confederate officials from service,” Ackerman said. Their attention has focused on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a rarely cited Civil War-era provision which allows Congress to bar individuals from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection.” A resolution to censure Trump would require a simple majority vote to pass in the House and Senate.Ĭonstitutional scholars including Michael Gerhardt, Lawrence Tribe, Bruce Ackerman and Erwin Chemerinsky have advised lawmakers on the plan.Īckerman, a professor of constitutional law and political science at Yale University, told McClatchy that President Joe Biden would not be required to sign the resolution - but that nothing would stop him from voluntarily endorsing the effort, “vindicating the Constitution’s continuing importance.”
Kaine then began exploring the idea on the Senate side. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida first raised the idea of a dual-track process that would reserve a second constitutional pathway. Trump’s impeachment trial begins on Tuesday in the Senate, where he is widely expected to be acquitted because conviction would require 17 Republican senators to join all Democrats.Īs the likelihood of Trump’s acquittal has grown, so too have calls within the Democratic caucus for an alternative path to prevent Trump from holding office again. Capitol building and interrupted Congress’ certification procedure. 6, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Ten Republican congressmen joined House Democrats last month to impeach Trump for a second time over “incitement of insurrection” on Jan.