Posted on 01/25/2021 10:18:35 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Sen. Patrick Leahy, President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, is expected to preside over the upper chamber’s second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump — not U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts — according to CNN and NBC News
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Hell, I was hoping it would be Romney!
That is not what it says in the Constitution. The Constitution says that the chief justice must officiate the impeachment trial of a President. Nancy Pelosi says Trump should be considered a President and not a plain citizen. If that is true then it requires Chief Justice John Roberts to preside over the trial. It is either he is a plain citizen which cannot be impeached or he is a President and Roberts must oversee the trial.
What must happen is that the Republicans in the Senate must refuse to take part in an unConstitutional impeachment trial. They must refuse to be seated for this Schumer-Pelosi sham. The democrats have no legal standing to hold this trial if the Chief Justice John Roberts starts the ball rolling by refusing to take part. When Roberts refuses, the Republicans have every right to refuse. If Joe Biden was a real man, he would step in now and say to Schumer and Pelosi lets grow up and stop this nonsense right now.
Why do you mention these things citizen? Revolutionaries act, they don't think.
Nothing screams credibility like changing out a supreme court justice for Leahy. 😆
Lewis Carroll, you should be living at this hour.
I am coming to believe this is Trump’s dream come true. He has his legal team show up with the juciest declass stuff and presents it on prime time.
You are assuming that Trump’s lawyers will be permitted to enter any evidence in the trial.
Drip, drip, drip. Tyranny is growing by the day and we sit here doing nothing.
Two divisions of troops in DC to preside over the “peaceful” transition of power from a “free and fair” election. Honest people don’t need such protection.
An impeachment of a now private citizen. Sounds more like an inquisition by the Sanhedrin to me. The Congress isn’t supposed to be able to conduct sham trials of citizens.
Leahy can’t even find his way to the bathroom anymore. The fraudulent tottering old fool is a disgrace but he doesn’t care. He is too gone to care.
If all the Republican Senators were refusing to be seated, the democrats would play hell explaining what they were doing and proving in the Supreme Court that it was Constitutional. All they would have there then would be Mitt Romney with all the democrats.
I sure hope so! I do hope he has a better legal team though. I haven’t seen who it will be.
The Belknap case stands for the proposition that each house of Congress can do whatever the hell they want whenever they want. It is up to the courts (and ultimately to the states) to decide whether what they are doing is Constitutional. So far, no court has ever ruled on the issue.
Senate proceedings on impeachment are non-justiciable. It is most definitely not up to the Courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court has weighed in on the matter.
Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993)
NIXON v. UNITED STATES ET AL.CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 91-740. Argued October 14, 1992-Decided January 13, 1993
After petitioner Nixon, the Chief Judge of a Federal District Court, was convicted of federal crimes and sentenced to prison, the House of Representatives adopted articles of impeachment against him and presented them to the Senate. Following proceedings pursuant to Senate Rule XI-which allows a committee of Senators to hear evidence against an impeached individual and to report that evidence to the full Senate the Senate voted to convict Nixon, and the presiding officer entered judgment removing him from his judgeship. He then commenced the present suit for a declaratory judgment and reinstatement of his judicial salary and privileges, arguing that, because Senate Rule XI prohibits the whole Senate from taking part in the evidentiary hearings, it violates the first sentence of the Constitution's Impeachment Trial Clause, Art. I, § 3, cl. 6, which provides that the "Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments." The District Court held that his claim was nonjusticiable, i. e., involved a political question that could not be resolved by the courts. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: Nixon's claim that Senate Rule XI violates the Impeachment Trial Clause is nonjusticiable. Pp. 228-238.
(a) A controversy is nonjusticiable where there is "a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it . . . ." Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 217. These two concepts are not completely separate; the lack of judicially manageable standards may strengthen the conclusion that there is a textually demonstrable commitment to a coordinate branch. Pp. 228-229.
(b) The language and structure of Art. I, § 3, cl. 6, demonstrate a textual commitment of impeachment to the Senate. Nixon's argument that the use of the word "try" in the Clause's first sentence impliedly requires a judicial-style trial by the full Senate that is subject to judicial review is rejected. The conclusion that "try" lacks sufficient precision to afford any judicially manageable standard of review is compelled by older and modern dictionary definitions, and is fortified by the existence of the three very specific requirements that the Clause's second and third sentences do impose—that the Senate's Members must be under oath or affirmation, that a two-thirds vote is required to convict, and that the Chief Justice presides when the President is tried-the precise nature of which suggests that the Framers did not intend to impose additional limitations on the form of the Senate proceedings. The Clause's first sentence must instead be read as a grant of authority to the Senate to determine whether an individual should be acquitted or convicted, and the commonsense and dictionary meanings of the word "sole" indicate that this authority is reposed in the Senate alone. Nixon's attempts to negate the significance of "sole" are unavailing, while his alternative reading of the word as requiring impeachment only by the full Senate is unnatural and would impose on the Senate additional procedural requirements that would be inconsistent with the three express limitations that the Clause sets out. A review of the Constitutional Convention's history and the contemporary commentary supports a reading of the constitutional language as deliberately placing the impeachment power in the Legislature, with no judicial involvement, even for the limited purpose of judicial review. Pp. 229-236.
(c) Justiciability is also refuted by (1) the lack of finality inherent in exposing the country's political life—particularly if the President were impeached—to months, or perhaps years, of chaos during judicial review of Senate impeachment proceedings, or during any retrial that a differently constituted Senate might conduct if its first judgment of conviction were invalidated, and by (2) the difficulty of fashioning judicial relief other than simply setting aside the Senate's judgment of conviction. See Baker, supra, at 210. P. 236.
(d) A holding of nonjusticiability is consistent with this Court's opinion in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486. Unlike the situation in that case, there is no separate constitutional provision which could be defeated by allowing the Senate final authority to determine the meaning of the word "try" in Art. I, § 3, cl. 6. While courts possess power to review legislative action that transgresses identifiable textual limits, the word "try" does not provide such a limit on the authority committed to the Senate. Pp. 236-238.
290 U. S. App. D. C. 420, 938 F. 2d 239, affirmed.
REHNQUIST, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, O'CONNOR, SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 238. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which BLACKMUN, J., joined, post, p. 239.
SOUTER, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 252
[...]
The Belknap case stands for the fact that the Senate has held that they have the jurisdiction to proceed with an impeachment proceeding after the office holder has left the office.
Also, the President Pro Tem presiding over a Presidential impeachment in not unprecedented. Senator Benjamin Wade was President Pro Tem, presided over the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, was sworn in as a member of the court, and voted guilty. Not that he had a conflict of interest, but at the time Ben Wade was next in line to be President.
Ahh, so Leahy can preside and still gets to vote.
Too bad.
Hell, I was hoping it would be Romney!
Do you have a program that inserts all the html needed to make that kind of post?
The Chief Justice can't just dismiss an impeachment case.
Do you have a program that inserts all the html needed to make that kind of post?
No, I code it by hand.
it’s impressive
This ludicrous ‘rat vendetta has now become too embarrassing even for Roberts to stomach!
Sure he can. “Case dismissed, here’s why”. Done deal.4
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