Can Trump Run Again in 2023 if Impeached

A contempo Facebook postal service offered a hopeful scenario for supporters of quondam President Donald Trump: It laid out a plan by which Trump could be president once again in 2023, and then run once more in 2024.

The Feb. 25 post offered a photograph of a grinning Trump at a lectern in the White Firm, with the following explanation:

"Trump can run for Congress in 2022, in FL. If he wins the seat and Republicans take over the House of Representatives, he could get the Speaker of the House. Then, his showtime deed could exist impeaching Joe (Biden) and Kamala (Harris). If it works, he finishes out the remainder of Biden'southward term and can still run for President in 2024. Wouldn't that be a hoot!"

The postal service was flagged as office of Facebook's efforts to combat fake news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more well-nigh our partnership with Facebook.)

In this example, the experts nosotros contacted said the scenario could work — in theory. And while it would probably be immune under the law, the likelihood of the scenario playing out in the real world would encounter some all-but-insurmountable practical obstacles.

Let's look at each element of the scenario individually.

"Trump can run for Congress in 2022, in FL."

Marking Herron, a Florida election lawyer, told PolitiFact that he doesn't see any residency issues clouding Trump'southward power to run for the U.South. Business firm representing a Florida district.

He cited Article I, section 2, of the Constitution, which says, "No Person shall be a Representative who shall non accept attained to the age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that Country in which he shall be chosen."

He wouldn't fifty-fifty take to run in his own congressional district, which, as it happens, is strongly Democratic. The district's representative, Democrat Lois Frankel, won by nigh xx points in 2020, and Trump lost it past virtually 17 points in the same election.

Instead, Trump could run in a safer Republican seat elsewhere in the state without moving. The courts take consistently ruled that states cannot pile on actress requirements to run for the Business firm beyond those laid out in the Constitution.

There would fifty-fifty be precedent for a erstwhile president moving to the House: John Quincy Adams served as president from 1825 to 1829 and so in the House from 1831 to his death in 1848.

"If he wins the seat and Republicans take over the Firm of Representatives, he could become the Speaker of the House."

Given the narrow Democratic margin in the House, it's entirely plausible that the GOP could take over the chamber after the 2022 elections. And if they did, a Rep. Trump could be elected speaker.

Ironically, he wouldn't fifty-fifty have to run and win a Firm seat to become speaker.

"A speaker of the House need non be a member of Congress," said John Fortier, a inquiry fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "That said, we have never elected a speaker from outside the House. But it is constitutionally permissible."

"Then, his first act could exist impeaching Joe (Biden) and Kamala (Harris)."

As the recent House impeachments of Trump himself have shown, votes to impeach are mainly cast forth party lines, so a Republican-controlled Business firm could probably pull information technology off. If the evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors is thin, so doing and then might not be politically highly-seasoned. But again, equally a applied matter, information technology could be done.

The more hard role — too articulate from the impeachments of Trump — would be getting the Senate to remove Biden and Harris from part.

Removal by the Senate requires a two-thirds vote, so even if the GOP were to take command of the Senate in the 2022 elections, information technology's almost impossible that they would go from 50 members today to 67 after 1 election in which only 1-third of the body volition even exist standing for reelection. (And that would presume that every one of those 67 Republicans votes to remove, something that would be a heavy lift.)

Essentially, the impeach-and-removal scenario is "inconceivable without some new facts, such as Biden and Harris doing something then bad that fifty-fifty Democrats desire them out," said Brian Kalt, a constabulary professor at Michigan State University.

"If it works, he finishes out the remainder of Biden's term"

The Business firm speaker would indeed be adjacent in line for the presidency as long as the offices of president and vice president are vacant, according to a statute that's been on the books since the 1940s

That said, experts noted two caveats.

The first is that some legal scholars believe the statute is unconstitutional for including members of Congress in the line of presidential succession, on the grounds of separation of powers between the governmental branches. "A example similar this would lead to a heated dispute," Kalt said.

However, Fortier said that even though he more often than not agrees that the statute is constitutionally dubious, "I call up it is unlikely a court would find the law unconstitutional in a crisis situation similar this."

The second outcome could be a bigger practical obstacle.

Experts say it'south doubtful that impeachment processes for both Biden and Harris could be run in lockstep. Then whoever remains afterwards the get-go removal — either Biden or the newly elevated President Harris — would take the ability to nominate a new vice president. Confirmation of a new vice president requires a elementary majority of both chambers.

At that place is no guarantee that a Republican Congress would vote to confirm the new vice president before pursuing the second removal, but the being of an alternative Democratic vice presidential nominee would get in even harder for Senate Democrats to vote to remove the remaining member of the Biden-Harris team.

President Richard Nixon addresses a joint session of Congress on June 2, 1972. In the background are Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, left, and Business firm Speaker Carl Albert. (AP)

The closest historical parallel occurred in the 1970s, when Vice President Spiro Agnew was under burn to resign even as President Richard Nixon was heading towards impeachment. After Agnew resigned, with Nixon weakened just still in function, "there were some congressional Democrats who argued that Congress should decline to confirm Gerald Ford as a new vice president, then impeach Nixon so that Speaker Carl Albert would get president," Fortier said.

Fortier said the effort was serious plenty that Ted Sorensen, a former aide to President John F. Kennedy, "was deputed to write transition memos laying out how to issue a shine transition to the Carl Albert Presidency. I take these memos in my files; they are extensive.  Albert himself never seriously considered this, and I do non think at that place was anywhere close to majority support for this even in the Democratic caucus. But information technology was considered."

"And tin can still run for President in 2024."

If everything else was to autumn in line, then this should, too.

The 22nd Amendment specifies that if you inherit office of someone'southward term, but that office is two years or less, it doesn't count towards the two-term limit.

The merely matter to keep in listen is that the Republican House and Senate would need to complete the impeachment-and-removal process afterwards January. twenty, 2023, said Steven S. Smith, a political scientist at Washington University in St Louis. Doing it quicker than that would expand Trump's second tenure in office beyond ii years, thus making him ineligible to run again in 2024.

Lesser line: There are no significant legal or constitutional barriers to the scenario outlined in the Facebook post. Merely the run a risk of this happening in the real globe? Vanishingly pocket-sized.

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Source: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/mar/03/could-donald-trump-become-speaker-then-president-2/

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