The majority of Senate Republicans have argued against convicting former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial on the grounds that it is supposedly unconstitutional to impeach and convict a president once he's out of office.
However, constitutional law expert Bob Bauer writes in the New York Times that adopting this framework would set a dangerous precedent in which the president could flagrantly break the law during the transition period at the end of his term without facing any consequences from Congress.
"It is the claim that a president can escape the consequences of egregious, impeachable conduct, and in particular disqualification from future office, so long as the Senate runs out of time to try the case before the end of his term," he writes. "It is highly doubtful that the framers intended the impeachment clause to give the president free rein to commit impeachable offenses in the closing months of his term."
Bauer also notes that the Constitution's framers designed impeachment specifically for people like Trump, as they warned in the Federalist papers of presidents who are "unworthy" men with "perverted ambition" who practice "with success the vicious arts, by which elections are too often carried."
"No basis exists for claiming that the drafters of the Constitution intended to leave presidents who have demonstrated danger to the Republic to seek the position again based on a mere happenstance of timing: that a Senate trial cannot take place after the president has been voted out of office," Bauer writes.
