Cotton: US Senate Can’t Hold Impeachment Trial Once Trump Leaves Office

“The Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president. The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office — not an inquest against private citizens,” Cotton said in a statement Wednesday evening, The Hill reported.

Cotton’s rationale for not voting to convict Trump once he leaves office will likely become political cover for other GOP senators to vote against a House-passed article of impeachment, even if they think Trump might have committed impeachable offenses.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced earlier Wednesday that Trump’s second impeachment trial will not begin until after the Senate returns from a recess scheduled to end on Jan. 19. That means the soonest the trial could begin would be 1 p.m. Jan. 20, the same day US President-elect Joe Biden is sworn-in.

“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week. The Senate has held three presidential impeachment trials. They have lasted 83 days, 37 days, and 21 days respectively,” McConnell said.

Cotton in his statement Wednesday evening also argued that the Senate would not be able to conclude a trial of Trump in the next six days.

“The House has passed an article of impeachment against the president, but the Senate under its rules and precedents cannot start and conclude a fair trial before the president leaves office next week,” he said.

The House voted 232 to 197 Wednesday to impeach Trump a second time, with 10 Republican lawmakers voting in favor of the article, which charged Trump with inciting insurrection after a pro-Trump mob overtook the US Capitol last week.

The article charges Trump with having “repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud” and incited a crowd that “unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel” and “menaced members of Congress.”

Cotton condemned the violence and said rioters should be fully prosecuted.

“'There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.’ Those words are as true today as when Abraham Lincoln spoke them. As I said last summer when mob violence gripped our streets, so I say again about the mob violence at our nation's Capital last week: those persons responsible should be held accountable in the courts to the full extent of the law,” he said.

But the Arkansas lawmaker said, “Fidelity to the Constitution must always remain the lodestar of our nation.”

“Last week, I opposed the effort to reject certified electoral votes for the same reason — fidelity to the Constitution — I now oppose impeachment proceedings against a former president,” Cotton said.