Can the US Senate disqualify a former President? In summary, the answer to "Can a US President, after impeachment and removal, be re-elected or re-appointed?" was "Yes, unless the Senate votes by simple majority to add the penalty of disqualification to a removal from office." Suppose a President can see that such a vote is coming and will pass, shortly before an election. Can that President resign just before the vote in order to effectively avoid the disqualification penalty?
SHORT ANSWER Suppose a President can see that such a vote is coming and will pass, shortly before an election. Can that President resign just before the vote in order to effectively avoid the disqualification penalty? Probably yes. But, there is no historical precedent for this happening. Nixon resigned before the House voted to impeach him, not midway into the impeachment proceedings. Neither Andrew Jackson nor Bill Clinton resigned prior to not being convicted on the basis of a U.S. House impeachment. Several federal judges and one cabinet official, however, have resigned midway through impeachment proceedings prior to being convicted, and in those cases, the case was dismissed and no judgment was entered by the U.S. Senate, so they were not disqualified from holding future federal public offices. LONG ANSWER Relevant Constitutional Language The pertinent provisions of the U.S. Constitution include the following: Article I, Section 2, Clause 5: The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7: 6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. 7: Judgment in Cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law. Article II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Article II, Section 2, Clause 3: The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed. Analysis The key language is in Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution which states in the pertinent part that: Judgment in Cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States[.] This means that a President who is impeached by the House and convicted by the U.S. Senate may be prohibited from holding any federal office from President to dogcatcher in the future. But, this can only be done in a &quot;judgment&quot; of the U.S. Senate in connection with an impeachment based upon a conviction in the U.S. Senate following a House impeachment, which has never happened. The history of the impeachment language and the limitation to removals from office, suggest that only a person who is current serving in office may be impeached. Otherwise, the proceeding would be invalid as moot, and would be dismissed (as it has been in the case of many judges who have resigned after investigations are initiated or after a House impeaches but prior to a conviction of impeachment). A U.S. Senate ruling that someone is disqualified from holding future office can only be entered in a judgment of conviction for impeachment, so cannot apply to a past President. If this were done it would probably be an invalid &quot;Bill of Attainder&quot; or &quot;Ex Post Facto&quot; law. See U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 (&quot;No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed&quot;). And, the U.S. Senate can't pass a law unilaterally, or enter a judgment convicting someone on an impeachment unless the House initiates the proceeding. There is no precedent concerning whether if someone who was convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office based upon an impeachment initiated by the U.S. House, in which the judgment did not disqualify the person impeachment from holding future federal public offices, the U.S. Senate could amend its judgment later on to also disqualify the person so removed from office from holding further public office. I suspect that if the question were presented that the federal courts would hold that the amendment of the impeachment judgment was not valid because the word &quot;judgment&quot; implies an immediate ruling upon a case and not a perpetual right to hold the person subject to the judgment in limbo regarding the consequences of his impeachment conviction.
Yes, so long as you are still a US citizen, it does not matter if you no longer maintain residence in the United States. If you no longer have any sort of residence that can be claimed as a current residence, you simply register at whatever the last residence you used was when you lived in the United States (even if someone else lives there now). You would then have an absentee ballot mailed to you overseas. However, if you don't maintain any sort of residence in the United States, you will only be eligible to vote for federal offices (president, senate, house). You won't be allowed to vote in state or local elections. The keywords you'll need for voting are: UOCAVA, which is a program that allows for easier voting overseas (in some cases the ballot can actually be emailed to you and you are only responsible for printing it out, filling it out, and mailing it back). FPCA, which is the form you fill out. It actually doubles as a registration and an absentee ballot request, so you only have to fill out one form. The absentee request is good for all elections in the calendar year it is submitted, so you only have to fill it out once for both the primary and the general.
The other answer is incorrect. In fact, the question you're asking turns on the meaning of the phrase &quot;the whole number of electors appointed.&quot; This could be interpreted either way, and as far as I know this ambiguity has never been considered by a court or by congress. It would only matter under the following conditions: Some states appoint fewer electors than the number to which they are entitled. The candidate with the greatest number of votes has more votes than half the number of electors actually appointed, but less than or equal to half the number of electors that should have been appointed. One way to look at this ambiguity is that it depends on how you parse the structure of the amendment. It could be either: a majority of (the whole number of electors) (appointed) a majority of the whole number of (electors appointed) In the first case, &quot;appoint&quot; refers to the sentence in Article 2 that specifies, determines, or &quot;appoints&quot; the number of electors. This reading is supported, for example, by the first definition of appoint at Merriam-Webster online, which is to fix or set officially, as in &quot;to appoint a trial date.&quot; However, if you look at Article 2, it says Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Here, appoint is used in its second sense, to name officially. This suggests that a failure by any state to appoint any elector to which it is entitled reduces &quot;the whole number of electors appointed&quot; because some available places in the Electoral College have not had anyone appointed to fill them. I favor the second interpretation, but I suspect that if the conditions outlined above actually did arise, Congress would choose the politically expedient interpretation. That is, if the candidate with the most votes was of the party in control of Congress, they would take the second interpretation, and if that candidate of the other party, they would take the first. I further suspect that the courts would not get involved.
No, it means the following are eligible: Natural born citizens Citizens of the United States, at the time of the adoption of the constitution The second part was to allow people that were citizens of the US in 1788 (but were obviously not "natural born citizens", since the US didn't exist when they were born) to be eligible for the Presidency. Check out Alexander Hamilton's draft of this clause: No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.
Yes. In 1872 President Grant was stopped for speeding (on horseback, mind you). The officer, observing that he had stopped the President of the United States, initially let him go with nothing but a verbal warning. Later the same day, the same officer stopped Grant again speeding in the same place. The officer then informed Grant that he would have to be taken in, to which Grant gave a reply encouraging the officer to do his duty. Grant was then taken to the police station where he was charged with speeding, and held until he paid a $20 fine, at which point he was released. In summary, POTUS was: Charged with an offence Deprived of his liberty for committing said offence Held until he served his punishment (paying $20) ... all without impeachment. Now, this was a long time ago. I think that today, this is unlikely, since Secret Service would (legal or not) shield the President from arrests (national security reasons). However if a state level authority did manage to arrest the President for a crime and refused to let him go, then the Vice President and cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment (on the grounds that the President is unable to discharge his duties due to imprisonment), so that the imprisoned person would now be a former president.
Yes Presidential pardons only deal with breaches of Federal law. So, if the punishment is a fine then that penalty is waived. However, if the fine is punishment for breach of state law, the pardon does not touch it - he would need a pardon from the relevant state Governor(s). But Anthony Levandowski is not being punished with a fine, he was punished with a jail term. What he owes Google is damages for breach of contract or a tort, both civil matters and almost certainly under California law, not a punishment for an offence. This is not something he can be pardoned for by a President (if under Federal law which is unlikely) or a Governor (if under state law). His actions constituted both an offence against the state, which can be pardoned, and caused damage to another person (Google) which can’t. He owes this money as a debt just as if he had bought something from them or borrowed money from them.
Art. 1 Sect 5 of the Constitution empowers both houses to make their own rules. That means that they can articulate rules regarding what or how you can talk on the floor. It is held that the president of the senate can issue a ruling, and the ruling can be overridden by majority vote. If the Constitution were amended to be more specific about rules of conduct, then some such Senate rules might be unconstitutional and SCOTUS could invalidate the rule. The only specific constitutional requirement on conducting business is that a majority constitutes a quorum.
Section 11302 of the California Elections Code makes it crystal clear - as soon as an office becomes vacant, the recall election proceeds anyway, unless as of that moment there are not enough signatures to proceed to the vote. So the resignation tactic can only be used to stop a recall election while they are still in the signature-gathering phase - it will not work if they have already gotten enough signatures. California's recall law as it applies to statewide elected officials is, frankly, idiotic (it should be like an impeachment, next officer in line gets the post), but it is designed specifically to stop a shenanigan like you describe. The Lieutenant Governor would become Governor if Newsom resigned, but only subject to the results of the Recall - if Newsom is recalled (despite already having resigned), the person with the plurality on part two of the ballot would become the next Governor.