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Two US Senators, a Democrat and a Republican, are scrambling to garner support for a vote to censor former President Donald Trump now that it looks like the Senate is unlikely to condemn him over the impeachment article of bedroom.
While a Senate majority voted this week to proceed to trial, the 55-45 vote was well short of the two-thirds that would be needed to convict. It prompted the senses. Tim Kaine, D-Va., And Susan Collins, R-Maine, to move a vote to censor the former president as an alternative punishment.
Kaine has said passing the censorship resolution could prevent Trump from taking a future job, but legal scholars aren’t so sure.
Censorship by one or both houses of Congress does not have the force of law if the person being censored is not a member of Congress. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to punish its own members, with the exception of the power of impeachment. A vote to censor someone in the executive or the legislature would therefore only express the non-binding “meaning” of Congress.
The idea that censorship could prevent Trump from holding a future federal term is based on how Kaine and his supporters read Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which reads: “No one should be a senator or representative in Congress, nor elector of the President and Vice-President, or hold office, civilian or military, under the United States, or under any state, which, having ever taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the States United, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of a state, to support the Constitution of the United States, will have engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against it- this. “
Strange as it sounds, said Professor Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas at Austin Law School, the legal question continues to be whether the president is, in fact, “an officer of the United States.” This phrase appears often in law, but the courts have yet to define the meaning when it comes to the person at the top of the executive.
Assuming the phrase applies to the president, if the Senate passed a censure resolution declaring Trump had engaged in an insurgency, it could prompt a state to block him from the ballot if it decided to run in 2024. Trump could then take legal action, and the courts would have to decide the matter.
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Alternatively, Trump could be allowed to vote in a state and an opponent could take legal action to get him fired, which would also take the matter to court.
Vladeck suggests that because of so many unknowns, the more prudent solution would be for both houses of Congress to approve a censure resolution, to give it more weight.
Unlike a vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial, a vote to censor him would only require a simple majority, which is another reason some senators might find more chances of success. But for now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is focusing on the House impeachment article.
“There will be a trial,” the New York Democrat said, “and the evidence against the former president will be presented in a vivid way for the nation and each of us to review.”
Julie tsirkin contributed.
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