If the dems want to do this, they will. There’s nothing to stop them. Getting two thirds to convict in the Senate is another matter but nothing is certain.
Yes. I don’t know of any others who were impeached after resigning or otherwise leaving office, but several have resigned or left office after impeachment but before the conclusion of the trial, which would be the situation with Trump.
I don’t know of any in which the trial automatically ended, and the Senate has repeatedly taken the position that it still has jurisdiction to try and convict a former officer. The first time this happened was Sen. William Blount who was impeached in 1797 and then expelled from the Senate before he could be tried. He moved to dismiss on two grounds: (1) Senators are not “officers” subject to impeachment, and (2) he is no longer an “officer” because he was expelled. The Senate dismissed on the first ground, not the second.
The most recent was Judge Kent in 2009. A couple weeks after he resigned, the House passed a resolution instructing the managers merely to inform the Senate that it “no longer desires to urge” the articles. The Senate accepted that and dismissed.
As far as I can tell, the Senate has never acknowledged that it lacked jurisdiction to try and convict an impeached former officer. But it has also never convicted a former officer, so no one has ever had a reason, or standing, to challenge this in court.
I can think of an argument or two against it, probably based on the bills of attainder clause, but you have to get pretty deep in the weeds to get there. Regardless, it is not at all clear that Dershowitz is right, and the Senate has historically disagreed with him.
I’m glad I’m not the only one to realize that this horrible possibility might just come to pass.
What’s your view on getting seventeen republicans to convict? With Trump completely isolated now and unable to defend himself in the court of public opinion, and a hostile media universally aligned to purge him, I expect future “bombshells” alleging impeachable offenses. One hundred days is plenty to have US attorneys file criminal charges. I fear that the GOP will be happy to rid themselves of Orange Man Bad.