01-07-2024, 06:56 PM
(01-07-2024, 12:41 PM)pally Wrote: Impeachment, convicted or otherwise, does not absolve a person from criminal culpability. It is simply the political process to remove an officeholder from that position. There have been people who have been impeached without criminal charges, before conviction, or even before being criminally charged. To place any relevance of the political process into the criminal justice system is ridiculous. They serve 2 separate purposes and do not intertwine. A point the judges will remind Trump and his attornies of if they continue to claim double jeopardy
You miss the point. Due process is foundational to the Constitution, and Trump can point to due process in the impeachment in which he was acquitted. I mention that only to the people saying he doesn't need to be charged with insurrection, which is correct. There's also debate about whether Section 3 is "self executing" and that it actually required Congressional action (which never happened). The federal legislative branch, which should be the ultimate authority on a federal election, did not declare this an insurrection and acquitted Trump. I don't think a state bench or legislator has the authority or standing to reject that finding and substitute their own interpretation.
People have not thought through what a potentially huge pandora's box this is. Someone gives a fiery speech, and a whack job or handful of nuts, related to the speech or not, riot and then we disqualify that person without due process. What about the guy that tried to assassinate Kavanaugh after all that fiery rhetoric when SCOTUS reversed Roe? What about CHAZ and all those BLM riots when Dems were advocating to defund the police?
The problem is claiming a riot - in which NO ONE was charged with insurrection - disqualifies someone opens the door for all kinds of political shenanigans from which the founding fathers CLEARLY sought to prevent. That's why a convicted felon can still run for POTUS, because the founding fathers want the voters to decide. There is also another remedy - one the "party of Democracy" tried to promote in 2016 - that electors are not bound by the vote (in many states, at least, not sure of all the particulars) in order to save the voters from themselves.
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