For the second time in just 10 months, the United States Congress approved submitting President Donald Trump to impeachment.
This Wednesday , the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives and ten Republicans made Trump the first president in the history of the country to have two impeachments on his resume.
Trump lo accuse of “incitement to insurrection”, after thousands of his followers stormed the Capitol on January 6 , where legislators were certifying the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential elections of November 2020.
The president rejects the accusation and assures that this process is a “continuation of the witch hunt” against him.
The first impeachment, which accused Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, failed to remove the president, which ien was exonerated by the almost unanimous vote of the Republican majority in the Senate.
This time, however, the circumstances are different: the president no longer enjoys monolithic support of the Republican Party , which will soon cease to be a majority in the Senate ..
And furthermore, this impeachment occurs when there are less than two weeks until Trump leaves the White House , he 20 January ..
BBC Mundo tells you what the main doubts are that surround this new procedure that – yes – has already made history by making Trump the only US president to be subjected to impeachment twice.
1.How and when will the trial take place?
Once the impeachment, the formal accusation, is approved by the Lower House, it goes to the Senate, which is where the political trial itself is held and a count na requires a two-thirds vote.
Thanks to their control over the House of Representatives, Democrats can decide when to send the indictment to the Senate, which would have to start the trial immediately.
- Trump becomes the only US president to face a second impeachment
This Wednesday it was not clear when this will happen as the Democratic leadership evaluates which It is the best time to do it so that the process does not obscure or hinder the first ones 100 days of the Biden government.
The same president-elect suggested this week that the possibility of the Senate working part-time in impeachment and part-time in the confirmation hearings of the high positions of the new government.
In any case , even if the House of Representatives decided to forward the indictment The process would not end before the new government takes office immediately to the Upper House , as the Republican majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, warned this Wednesday.
“Given the Senate rules, procedures and precedents governing presidential political trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial can conclude before President-elect Biden is inaugurated next week,” he said.
The Senate is in recess and its calendar does not provide for the restart of activities until 19 of January, just one day before the Biden takeover.
2. What will be the role of the Republicans
Unlike what happened with the impeachment of 2020, which was rejected en bloc by Republican deputies, this time Trump does not have support monolithic.
The approval of starting this second political trial in the House of Representatives had the vote of 10 Republican Party legislators . In addition, four abstained, suggesting cracks in the conservative ranks.
In fact, during this Wednesday’s debate in Congress even the Republican legislators who opposed the impeachment did so more based on the argument that the measure will deepen political divisions in the country more than defending Trump’s innocence in the face of the charges against him.
Similarly, while last year former presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to vote in favor of convicting and remove Trump from office, this time there are several voices that criticize the president.
Although Romney continues to be seen as the Republican most likely to vote in favor of the sentence, others Conservative senators like Lisa Murkowski and Pat Toomey have said that Trump should resign.
Some US media also mention Senators Susan Collins and Ben Sasse as possible votes against the president.
But even if these five republica will support the accusation, it is not clear that a conviction can be obtained since to reach two thirds the vote of at least 16 of the 71 senators of that party.
Many analysts point out that the key to getting the missing votes is in the hands of Mitch McConnell, who unlike what happened in 2020 when made clear from the principle that would oppose impeachment, this time he has left the door open to a conviction.
“ I have not made a final decision about how I am going to vote and I intend to listen to legal arguments when presented to the Senate, ”he said Wednesday in a statement released by a spokesman.
“I believe that if McConnell supports the impeachment in the Senate, then the votes will be obtained to convict the president,” said a senior Republican aide to NBC.
McConell has been a strong Trump ally with whom he has shared numerous goals over the past four years, but last week he marked a clear distance by openly rejecting the president’s efforts to change the results of the presidential elections.
But even for the Republican leaders who condemn the assault on the Capitol and who attribute some responsibility to Trump for what happened, the decision to convict him is difficult because the president continues to be an immensely popular figure among the rank and file of the party.
According to a survey by Quinnipiac pollster conducted after the assault on the Capitol, 71% of Republicans approve of Trump’s administration and 73% believe that he is protecting and not weakening democracy.
This popularity gives the president great influence among voters, which on previous occasions has allowed him to derail the candidacies for popularly elected positions of conservative leaders who were not loyal to him.
3. What their promoters gain from impeachment
A president convicted in a political trial in the Senate, something that has never happened, is punished with removal from office.
But this will not conclude until after Trump has left the White House and that is why the question arises about what sense it makes to carry out this process and, even, if it will continue to be legally appropriate.
Article II section 4 of the Constitution says:
“The Constitution grants Congress the authority to impeach and remove the President, Vice President from power and all the civil charges of the US federal government for treason, bribery or other high crimes and crimes. ”
As nothing explicit appears about the deadlines to carry out the impeachment, Jurists choose to interpret constitutional articles in one sense or another.
Greg Woods, professor of Judicial Studies at San José State University (California), considers that in these circumstances the sentence loses meaning.
“Given that the incumbent president has been voted out of office through a legal election, and with little more than a week remaining, the political condemnation of impeachment is irrelevant , it is no longer necessary “, said Woods in conversation with BBC Mundo.
Other experts consider that since the The House of Representatives approved to formally impeach the president while he is still in power, the Senate can judge him even if he has already left office.
Before the charges against Trump were approved this Wednesday, there were some voices who rose up asking that rather a kind of vote of no confidence be approved against the president.
However, the president of the Lower House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, refused to opt for that option because it is considered insufficient.
And it is that those who promote impeachment point out that the objective goes beyond removing Trump from the presidency.
If he is convicted, the Senate may also decide to prohibit him from holding any public office in the future.
He would also lose the benefits granted to his predecessors under the Former Presidents Act ( 1958) which include a pension, health insurance, a travel budget of up to US $ 1 million and a a series of security measures, all paid for by taxpayers.
A sanction with similar scope would put an end to the legal possibility of Trump seeking to run again for the presidency in 2020 -as he has hinted on several occasions- but it could also allow his opponents within the Republican Party to try to regain control of that institution.
At the end of the day, we must not lose sight of the fact that Trump began to dominate that party in 2016 against the will of a large part of its leaders , many of whom chose to bend to their designs more for a strategy of survival ncia than for something else.
Thus, even after the 20 of January, a Trump conviction could favor not only the Democratic Party but also sectors of the Republican Party.
Although that, of course, will also depend on the popularity that the president manages to maintain among voters, since with the current levels of support he will continue to be a reference figure in US politics, even if he cannot be a candidate.
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