Michael Luttig believes that the Senate lacks constitutional authority to hold Trump's impeachment trial after January 20. He is wrong, as Andy Koppelman and I explain in an essay for Law & Crime. Here is the gist:
Former federal appellate court judge Michael Luttig evidently played an important role in saving American democracy last week, when he convinced Vice President Mike Pence that he lacked the “unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted.” As Luttig explained it – and as quoted in Pence’s letter to Congress – “the only responsibility and power of the Vice President under the Constitution is to faithfully count the Electoral College votes as they have been cast.” Luttig is rightly revered among conservatives as a close reader of the Constitution, making his analysis of the Twelfth Amendment especially persuasive. Now Luttig has opined, in the pages of the Washington Post, that the Senate’s impeachment trial of President Trump cannot be held after he leaves office. This time, Luttig is wrong. The Senate can indeed try and convict Trump once he again becomes an ordinary citizen, although the only available judgment will be to disqualify him from holding a federal government office in the future.
You can read the entire article here.
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