... it is imperative that Congress ensure that this president never takes power again. The clearest and most constitutionally appropriate way to do this is for the House to impeach President Trump, and then for the Senate to vote to disqualify him from holding any future federal public office.
The power of Congress to disqualify an impeached president from holding office has received less attention through history than the power of Congress to remove a president from office. The Constitution is clear that after a House majority vote to impeach and a two-thirds Senate vote to convict, the president is removed from office.
Yet Article I Section VII clarifies that removal is not the only punishment impeachment can bring. It reads: “Judgment in Cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” This clause shows definitively that the Senate can inflict a penalty that would prevent Trump from holding office again. Under established Senate practice, that vote to disqualify would require only a simple majority vote in the Senate, less than the two-thirds vote required for conviction...
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Two historical precedents have established this procedure. In 1862, a federal judge named West Hughes Humphreys was impeached by the House. When it came time for the Senate to pronounce judgement, the body determined that the decisions of whether to remove and whether to disqualify were separable. The Senate first voted by two-thirds majority to convict and remove Humphreys, and then took a second vote, under a simple majority requirement, to disqualify him from future federal office. In an eerie foreshadowing of what we just witnessed with Trump, one impeachment article accused Humphreys of acting “in disregard of his duties as a citizen…Humphreys endeavor[ed] by public speech to incite revolt and rebellion’ against the United States.”https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/07/we-must-impeach-trump-and-bar-him-from-holding-office-again-now
A second disqualification was voted upon in 1913 in a case involving federal judge Robert Archbald. Archbald was convicted by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, and then, in a separate vote, he was disqualified from holding future office on a simple majority vote of 39 to 35. In a later 1936 trial involving Judge Ritter, the Senate cited the Humphreys precedent for the simple majority requirement for disqualification, though ultimately the Senate did not impose the penalty of disqualification.
These precedents show the Senate is permitted to disqualify President Trump from future officeholding on a majority vote if he is impeached and convicted. Disqualification is a severe punishment for a “high crime and misdemeanor,”
and although it has been used in impeachments of federal judges, it has never been imposed on a US president. Now, however, we have crystal clear evidence that the president has engaged in conduct that requires this extreme punishment...
...Even if the House does not impeach Trump within the next two weeks, Congress should still move to impeach and disqualify him after he has left office. There is an active scholarly debate on whether a former president can be impeached, and no court has yet definitively ruled on the matter. Still, Congress should attempt this approach after the two new Democratic senators from Georgia are seated to ensure it does everything in its power to keep Trump from threatening democracy in the future...
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