Donald Trump during the demonstration on 6 January, in front of the White House. – Jacquelyn Martin / AP / SIPA
Is Donald Trump unfit to lead United States ? This is not the first time that the question has arisen since his election. It is however still in place, even if it is only for a few days but the events of the Capitol on Wednesday may have reshuffled the cards. Several anonymous US media sources have indeed explained that the option to use the 20 th amendment of the American constitution, which allows to impeach the president,
had been mentioned by some members of the government .
We are not talking about the famous “impeachment”. This procedure, long, since it is neither more nor less than a lawsuit investigated by the Congress, has no chance of succeeding, if only because of the very short deadlines. The process, which we still have fresh memories since Donald Trump underwent during his mandate, lasts for months. And, in this case, this attempt had ended in failure: the Republican senators, then in the majority, remained almost entirely loyal to the president.
A unique scenario
The 25 e constitutional amendment , adopted in 310, clarifies the situations in which the president is dismissed from his functions, temporarily or permanently. Its use is not so rare since it can be used in the event of an operation by the Head of State under general anesthesia for example: for a few hours, it is the vice-president who temporarily exercises his functions. Several TV series ( Designated Survivor , To the White House…) use this extreme constitutional case in their accounts.
But the 25 This amendment also allows for the removal of a president without his or her consent, but section IV of this amendment has never been used. What are the conditions ? To do this, the vice president and a majority of current ministers must send a letter to the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives saying that the President of the United States “is unable to exercise powers. and to fulfill the duties of his office ”. In this case, the Vice-President immediately becomes President.
A very unlikely impeachment
The newly dismissed president can in a way appeal against this dismissal: he can himself send a letter, always to the President of the Senate and the President of the House of Representatives, to say “that no incapacity exists”. In this case, the president resumes his duties UNLESS, within four days the vice president and a majority of ministers persist and sign a new letter to the two presidents of the chambers of Congress to confirm the president’s incapacity.
It would then be in the Senate and the House of representatives to decide: a vote would be organized in the two chambers where it would take a two-thirds majority for the president to be effectively removed from office. Otherwise, it would obviously resume its place. We therefore understand that it would take a particularly exceptional alignment of political planets in Washington for all of this to happen before January. Even taking into account the events of Wednesday: even if the vice-president and a majority of the government turned against Donald Trump, there is nothing to say that we would not find at least a third of MPs and / or senators. to stay behind the President.
On Basically, the specialist of the American constitution, Alan Dershowitz, Democrat, but who was one of Donald Trump’s lawyers during the impeachment procedure, judged this Thursday morning, on Europe 1 , that the 25 The amendment was “totally inapplicable” in this case. “It was developed in the case of a president who was physically unconscious or clinically insane and therefore it would be unconstitutional to apply the 20 th amendment in the case of President Trump. “This January 7, there are thirteen days of presidency to Donald Trump, who has just announced that an” orderly transition “would take place on 20 January.