President Donald J. Trump has been impeached a second time in a single term. “Remember my name” goes the song from “Fame.” We will remember. Maybe like Nixon Trump will get his own opera. But a tragedy or a comedy?
Ten House Republicans voted with Democrats on Wednesday to send a single article of impeachment to the Senate for trial. The charge: incitement of insurrection. The vote: 232 to 197.
As expected, Trump’s defenders in their floor speeches Wednesday deflected and whatabouted. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally speech could not have incited the the insurrection and sacking of the Capitol. “[W]e all know this was pre-planned, and it started while the president was speaking,” argued Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), ignoring two months of lies about a stolen election and how many times Trump promoted the event in previous weeks.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19. “Be there, will be wild!” It was one of several tweets that day promoting the rally planned for the day of the electoral vote counting in Congress. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel noted the WiFi password for reporters at Trump’s Georgia rally two days earlier was “SeeYouJan6!”
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest ranking Republican in the caucus, would not let them forget. She issued a statement in favor of impeachment, summarizing Trump’s complicity in the insurrection that put their lives at risk:
The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President.
As for the rally speech itself, “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday evening assembled an unnerving, four-minute highlight reel of Trump’s most inflamatory statements from his “Save America” speech. [timestamp 9:30].
Trump issued a statement during the debate urging no violence, lawbreaking or vandalism, obviously hoping it would help his defenders. It did not. Banned from Twitter and under threat of legal exposure for the riot, Trump later issued a five-minute video statement via the White House Twitter account after the impeachment vote. With rumors of more protests in all 50 states, Trump said, “There must be no violence, no lawbreaking and no vandalism of any kind.”
Trump’ proletarian insurrectionists may not be as “economically anxious” as advertised, but Trump himself must be. His brand is in the toilet, sources of income are evaporating, and he has $340 million in loans to Deutsche Bank coming due in 2023 and 2024. (Deutsche Bank, expect to be stiffed.) On top of that, he now has to worry about criminal indictments, and maybe not just in the city and state of New York.
Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 2, Cl. 1:
The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
As few times as these matters have been adjudicated (and seeing I’m not a constitutional lawyer), Trump now has to worry now that his pardon power can no longer help him or his family.
Corey Brettschneider and Jeffrey K. Tulis write:
We and other legal scholars understand the clause to mean something different — that the president cannot pardon himself or others in matters directly associated with his own impeachment. Under this view, Trump could issue no pardon for himself or the insurrectionists for criminal charges related to the events of last week. Recently, other scholars, including Lawrence Friedman and Kim Wehle, have adopted this view, which we developed at length here and here.
[…]
Congress’s own interpretation of the pardon power may matter greatly, especially since the Supreme Court has never definitively decided the extent of the impeachment exception. Recent news reports indicate that members of Congress also understand impeachment to strip the president of his pardon power. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), for instance, indicated that he is open to the view that the phrase gives the House the power to strip a president of the powers of pardoning in matters related to the insurrection.
Or to his family? Maybe Trump’s opera will be a tragedy after all.