Another law expert and professor denounced the Democrat-led impeachment in the House of Representatives against President Donald Trump, saying it is unconstitutional and damaging to America's rule of law, a report said on Wednesday.
After national legal adviser and The George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the "snap impeachment" a "contradiction of constitutional terms" as a "dangerous precedent" being done by his co-Democrats, comes former Harvard School Law professor Alan Dershowitz who called the impeachment a theatrical display.
CBN News cited an interview Dershowitz had with Fox where the renowned U.S. constitutional lawyer said, "The Constitution only empowers Congress to impeach and remove a president from office. Once he's out of office, Congress loses jurisdiction, they can't have a trial."
In an article written for the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council website entitled, "Can The Senate Try Private Citizen Trump After He Leaves Office?", Dershowitz stated that the impeachment being done now is "simply wrong as a matter of the Constitutional text and meaning."
"The Framers of the Constitution debated impeachment extensively. It is clear that they intended it to apply only to sitting presidents and other office holders and not to private citizens who previously held that office," he stressed.
Adding that, "The Framers did, however, regard impeachment and trial as part of one single process, culminating in removal from office. And so, if removal from office is no longer a possibility, it would seem that Congress would have no jurisdiction to impeach."
Dershowitz contested that what the Democrats wanted "to do is to impeach President Trump without giving him an opportunity to defend himself at a Senate trial." He explained that this "would be analogous to a prosecutor deciding to indict someone and then deny him a trial at which he could disprove his guilt or prove his innocence."
"That would be a core denial of due process, as would impeaching a president based on a majority of the House while denying him a trial in the Senate that requires a two-thirds super majority to remove," he stressed.
"This absurd reading of the Constitution shows how far people are willing to go to prevent President Trump from becoming a candidate in 2024," he explained. "Such an interpretation of the Constitution would render the impeachment provisions utterly meaningless."
Turley, in addition, tweeted on Thursday that those after Trump's impeachment would have to go through the Supreme Court to actually do so after he leaves the U.S. presidential seat on Jan. 20.
"The Senate is now set for one of the most bizarre moments in constitutional history: the removal of someone who has already left office. The planned impeachment trial of Donald Trump after he leaves office would be our own version of the Cadaver Synod," Turley said with a link to his regular column at USA Today where he likened the snap impeachment to Snapchat conversations.
The Senate is now set for one of the most bizarre moments in constitutional history: the removal of someone who has already left office. The planned impeachment trial of Donald Trump after he leaves office would be our own version of the Cadaver Synod. https://t.co/NucCIFQUXW
"” Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 14, 2021
As per CBS News, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Trump "to prevent him from ever becoming a president again" based on the remarks of Senate President Nancy Pelosi.
"He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love," Pelosi said during the impeachment vote.
Trump is the first U.S. President to have faced impeachment twice.
In similar news, PBSO News Hour reported that the House of Representatives voted 232-197 last Wednesday to impeach Trump after debating on the account of inciting violence to the U.S. Capitol. The riots lead to the death of four individuals including American Airforce Veteran Ashli Babbitt, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, and three others.
