According to the Daily Wire, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has rejected the plan to reconvene the Senate for an emergency session to hold a trial for over another impeachment article filed against President Trump.
McConnell’s press secretary Doug Andres confirmed that the Kentucky Senator would not change his mind in reconvening the Senate to remove Trump for office a week when his term is to expire.
The Senate is due back in session on Jan. 19, and without an emergency session this all but kills Democrat’s second failed attempt to remove President Trump from office. Democrats have also proposed to continue with a trial well into a Biden presidency, however a former judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit Michael Luttig slammed the idea calling it “unconstitutional” to go on with an impeachment trial after a sitting President has left office.
Michael Luttig wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying “Once Trump’s term ends on JAn. 20, Congress loses its constitutional authority to continue impeachment proceedings against him – even if the House has already approved articles of impeachment. Therefore, if the House of Representatives were to impeach the president before he leaves office, the Senate could not thereafter convict the former president and disqualify him under the Constitution from future public office. The reason for this is found in the Constitution itself. Trump would no longer be incumbent in the Office of the President at the time of the delayed Senate proceedings and would no longer be subject to “impeachment conviction” by the Senate, under the Constitution’s Impeachment Clauses. Which is to say that the Senate’s only power under the Constitution is to convict – or not – an incumbent president.”
Democrats have already pressured Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Trump, after the House passed a resolution to pressure Mike Pence to convene the Cabinet and remove Trump via the 25th Amendment, but he backed down from that idea believing it will divide the nation even further.
Senator McConnell was also on board with Democrats efforts to impeach Donald Trump as he believes it would be easier to purge Trump from the GOP.
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