A new book about Donald Trump’s time in the White House showcases that the former president lacks a basic understanding of the constitutional rules surrounding impeachment.
The book, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” written by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, contains a number of anecdotes about Trump’s tenure in the White House. Trump’s commentary on his first impeachment trial — which was centered around his attempt in 2019 to coerce Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to find political dirt on now-President Joe Biden in exchange for military assistance from the U.S. — demonstrates his lack of knowledge on the process.
“I’ll just sue Congress. They can’t do this to me,” Trump said at the time, according to Haberman’s book.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t contain statutory languageThis allows a federal official or agency to sue Congress to stop impeachment.
Haberman’s account of Trump’s comments echoes the former president’s statements months before the hearings began. Although Trump didn’t explicitly state that he would sue to stop a hypothetical impeachment, he did imply that he’d try to use the court system to stall or stop the process.
“If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Trump said on Twitter in the spring of that year.
Again, there is no provision that allows the Supreme Court stop an impeachment. According to the Constitution, the federal court system is completely absent from the process.
Both Article IAnd Article IIThe Constitution, which deals with Congress and President, explains how this process works. Article IIIThe article, which discusses the Supreme Court and the federal courts, briefly mentions impeachment, but only to state that all criminal trials, except for impeachments will be decided by juries.
The only time that the Supreme Court is involved is when a president is impeached. However, that involvement is limited. The Constitution states that the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court will preside at the Senate impeachment trial and does nothing more.
The House votes to impeach the president, and the Senate votes to remove them — the Chief Justice doesn’t play a role in determining the outcome in either house of Congress.
According to Bess Levin (a political correspondent). Vanity Fair Trump’s comments from 2019 are still relevant, as they showcase how little he knows about the Constitution and the limits of the presidency.
“Given this man’s apparent ambitions to seek yet another four years in office, it feels necessary, in a fate-of-the-planet kind of way, to make sure every instance of him being a full-on half-wit is recorded for posterity,” Levin wrote in a recent column.
