While it would take 67 votes in the Senate to "remove" former President Donald Trump, Senate precedent requires just 50 votes to block Trump from running again in 2024, but it will not work, according to constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz on Newsmax TV.
"This is an attempt to simply control the electoral process in 2024," Dershowitz told "Saturday Report," adding he is not involved in this impeachment trial team for this "political theater" because he is "neither a politician nor an actor."
"It's illegal," Dershowitz told host Carl Higbie. "The Constitution provides for impeachment as an extraordinary remedy only to remove somebody from office. One they're removed from office, you can then disqualify them.
"But you can't impeachment somebody simply to disqualify them, because if you could, the party in power could simply impeach any potential candidate in the future and determine who they are running against. That's not what the framers intended."
As an example of the partisan nature of this latest impeachment against Trump, Dershowitz said, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts is constitutionally required to preside over only the impeachment of the sitting president, so Vice President Kamala Harris might ultimately be the presiding officer over the disqualification of her potential 2024 political opponent.
"If she presides over a potential disqualification of her potential political opponent that will also divide the country even more than it's divided today, so if you want to bring the country together, you do not have this show trial," Dershowitz said, adding "it's just overzealot, partisan, political pandering."
Dershowitz also noted, legally, the Senate trial of 50 votes and Harris' tiebreaker might not even work in restricting Trump from running for president again in 2024, because "condemning" Trump for allegedly inciting the storming of the Capitol will have no "force and effect in law."
Trump can merely ignore the Senate "ancillary" disqualification, or fight it in courts as a "tactical option" because the Senate lacked "jurisdiction" to try an ordinary citizen who has already left office, Dershowitz added.
"Disqualification is not an independent alternative to removal" after a Senate conviction by the Constitution, Dershowitz said.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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