Look, I totally understand the desire of Democrats to remove this president from office before January 20. If it were up to me and I had the means, I'd beam him into outer space along with his entire family. But since this isn't Star Trek and I'm not Scotty, we'll have to rely on a more conventional method.
And the method Democrats appear to have settled on is impeachment. To be clear, impeachment and conviction would not only force Trump from office, it would bar him from ever running for the White House again. But it does have pros and cons.
Before we get to them, I thought I'd take a look at the other alternatives.
Resignation: There's no way in hell Trump would ever resign; it would be admitting he lost and he'll never do that. But let's assume for the moment that he has an epiphany. The only reason he'd do it would be if Mike Pence agreed to pardon him. Good luck with that. After the way Trump threw him under the bus last week, I doubt Pence would throw a bottle of water on him if he were on fire.
25th Amendment: I'll admit this makes sense, given how unstable he is. Indeed, I've been calling for it since his first year in office. Here's the problem. While there is support from among some in the cabinet, Pence isn't on board with it. At least not yet. You can't invoke the 25th Amendment without the vice president's approval, especially since he's the one who would take over as commander in chief. There's also the very real likelihood that Trump would fight it which means Congress would have to decide the matter. This Congress.
Censure. Initially, I thought this might be the best way to go. Unlike a lengthy Senate trial, which might not even be successful, a censure is far more efficient and has a greater chance of passing both chambers. Unfortunately, while it would be a stinging rebuke, it wouldn't bar Trump from running for and winning the presidency again, which if I'm not mistaken was the whole point of taking action in the first place.
So that leaves us with impeachment. As I said there are pros and cons. Let's start with the former.
Pros:
1. Politically, it's appealing. And unlike the Ukrainian phone call, there's bi-partisan support for it.
2. The House could expedite the process by drafting and passing the article of impeachment by Wednesday and transmitting it over to the Senate by Thursday.
3. The evidence is overwhelming and unambiguous. All the House manager(s) would have to do is role the tape showing Trump addressing the mob followed by the assault on the Capital building.
Cons:
1. While the House will fast-track the process on its end, Mitch McConnell has already said he will not start a trial in the Senate until January 20, Inauguration Day.
2. While the Senate is bogged down by the trial, everything else would come to a stop, including the confirmation of Biden's nominees for Justice, State, Defense, etc...
3. Even after an assault that could've killed many of them, there's still a very strong probability that not enough Republicans will vote to convict Trump to ensure a two-third's majority. As of now, only a handful are even open to the idea.
4. Trump is considering asking Rudy Giuliani to defend him, guaranteeing that the entire trial will devolve into a spectacle of conspiracy theories about non-existent voter fraud that will act as a distraction and give reluctant Republican senators the excuse they need to acquit.
Don't get me wrong: I supported the impeachment against this president back in 2019, even though I knew he would likely be acquitted by the Senate. For me, it was about the principle. This time around, I don't support it. Not because Trump isn't guilty; he is, but because the effort would be in vain. Think about it: If the goal here is to remove Trump before Inauguration Day and to guarantee that he never occupies the Oval Office again, impeachment isn't a very good way to go about it. But there is a way to accomplish the latter without the spectacle of the former hamstringing the first two weeks of the Biden Administration. Two weeks that will be critically important in the lives of millions of desperate Americans.
Benjamin Wittes of The Atlantic argues that if Trump attempts to pardon himself, it might not survive a legal challenge. He explains,
Back in 1974, a woman named Mary Lawton articulated what has been the executive branch’s position on presidential self-pardons ever since. Lawton was then the acting director of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is the guardian of presidential power, the office responsible for interpreting the law on behalf of the executive branch in a fashion that protects executive prerogatives. As such, the OLC tends to take expansive views of presidential authority within the confines of reasonable legal interpretation. Yet during the Watergate era, Lawton wrote that the pardon power does not permit a self-pardon: “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative,” she held for the department. To my knowledge, her opinion has not been withdrawn during the Trump administration, though it is certainly possible that the OLC has done subsequent work on the subject and kept it secret.
The president does have the authority to overrule the OLC, or to just ignore it, so the fact that the Justice Department has long held that he may not pardon himself isn’t a real impediment—except in one important optical sense: The courts, including the Supreme Court, would know that Trump was taking a position far more radical than the executive branch ever has on this matter. Indeed, they would know that he was taking it in contrast with a long-standing Justice Department position.
What’s more, the courts, and ultimately the justices, would know that the Justice Department had—within days of Trump’s self-pardon—reverted to its traditional view. President-elect Joe Biden takes office in only two weeks. He will surely adopt the view that the president may not pardon himself. So the Justice Department under him will undoubtedly argue, representing both the current president and the traditional position of the executive branch, against the self-pardon. Meanwhile, the former president will have taken a position that radically outflanks that of the traditional guardian of presidential power, in a self-serving view of the pardon power that held sway in the executive branch for all of two weeks.
As I've mentioned several times, Trump's main reason for acting like this isn't so much about losing an election to Biden; though I'm sure it bothers him to no end. It's about what happens to him after he leaves the White House and he no longer has the protections afforded him by the office. Both the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York Attorney General have expressed interest in pursuing criminal charges against both him and his organization that could potentially land him in state prison. He knows it and so do his attorneys.
Then there's the Southern District of New York, where his role as "Individual One" in the Michael Cohen case will likely wind up with an indictment being issued. When you tack on a charge of sedition - which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years - to a long list of malfeasants, it becomes painfully clear that his life as a private citizen will become a living nightmare pretty much starting at 12:01, January 20. Jay Sekulow is going to earn his money, you can count on that.
I'm sure I don't have to remind anyone that as a prisoner - federal or state - Trump won't be able to run for jack shit, unless, of course, it's for supervisor of license plate production. This is his most likely destiny: not as the leader of the Republican Party, but as a convict hiding from his new boyfriend. He may have managed to fool the millions of rubes who look to him like he's a manna from heaven, but for career prosectors, he's the second coming of John Gotti.
This is the best way to get even with Trump. This is how you keep him from ever getting a second crack at this democracy, by throwing the book at him once he leaves office and making sure the next time he sees the outside of a prison wall it'll be in a casket. With any luck at all, his cellmate will be Rudy. Those two deserve to spend the rest of eternity together in hell for the damage they've done. And trust me, there are NO pardons for residents of that ghastly place.
Ten days, people. That's all that's left until this malignancy of a presidency comes to an end. And, yes, I'm well aware that ten days is a lifetime with Trump. He's capable of anything at this point. But my gut tells me that between Pence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, I think they've put just enough buffers in place to prevent him from starting World War III - hopefully.
To tell you the truth, I'm more worried about his storm troopers returning for round two on January 20. Treating them with kid gloves the way they were on the 6th only served to embolden them. For the sake of the country, I hope steps have been taken to ensure a repeat performance doesn't occur.
Now is the time to pray, my fellow Americans, not just for this once great republic, but for the incoming administration. They will soon have the unenviable task of dealing with the carnage and wreckage left behind by a truly abhorrent, little man.
God willing, may they be up to the challenge.
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