Belknap Trial Was a Precedent Against Second Trump Trial
Going against the text of the Constitution, precedent, and logic, the House of Representatives — no doubt fueled by the hate of now-former President Donald Trump — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic Party leadership, decided to rush through a “snap” impeachment of Trump in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6.
Despite the fact that Trump’s term was going to end on January 20, the House voted to impeach him, ignoring any opportunity for Trump to mount a proper defense to the charges. As the impeachment occurred too late for the Senate to conduct a trial before the end of Trump’s term, the logical thing for the Senate to have done was to consider the whole sham a moot point.
After all, the whole purpose of an impeachment trial under the Constitution is to consider the removal of a federal officer — in this case, the president — from office before the end of his term. Searching for a precedent to go ahead and try Trump anyway, the Democrats in Congress and in the media latched on to an obscure 19th-century case in which a secretary of war was impeached and tried after his resignation.
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