commander-in-chief, to refuse to send help . . . . [T]hat would be a sure way to make a mockery of the civil liberties . . . contemplated and secured by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”[1]
III. THE SENATE HAS JURISDICTION TO TRY THIS IMPEACHMENT
Given the overwhelming strength of the case against him, we expect President Trump will seek to escape any reckoning for his constitutional offenses by asserting that the Senate lacks jurisdiction over him as a former official. That argument is wrong. It is also dangerous. The period in which we hold elections and accomplish the peaceful transfer of power is a source of great pride in our nation. But the transition between administrations is also a precarious, fragile time for any democracy—ours’ included. The Framers anticipated these risks and emphasized that presidential abuse aimed at our democratic process itself was the single most urgent basis for impeachment. It is unthinkable that those same Framers left us virtually defenseless against a president’s treachery in his final days, allowing him to misuse power, violate his Oath, and incite insurrection against Congress and our electoral institutions simply because he is a lame duck. There is no “January Exception” to impeachment or any other provision of the Constitution. A president must answer comprehensively for his conduct in office from his first day in office through his last. Former President John Quincy Adams thus declared, “I hold myself, so long as I have the breath of life in my body, amenable to impeachment by [the] House for everything I did during the time I held any public office.”[2]
As the Senate itself concluded in the trial of Secretary of War William Belknap, and as nearly every legal expert has affirmed, President Adams had the right idea. The Constitution does not allow officials to escape responsibility for committing impeachable offenses by resigning when
