Right now, as everyone is chattering about the need to remove President Drumpf as soon as possible in the wake of his inciting a riot on January 6th, people are getting very excited about the possibility of getting this clown out of office before Biden’s January 20th inauguration.

But hold your horses everyone.

Impeachment isn’t any more likely than removal through the 25^th Amendment.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

And the last time we were here it took four months between the beginning of the investigation before the acquittal in the Senate.  Just to review, the normal steps are:

1. Calls for an Impeachment and creation of special rules.
2. An investigation by the House.
3. Articles of Impeachment drawn up by the House (based on the investigation)
4. A trial in the Senate

Nancy Pelosi is apparently planning to bring a “privileged resolution” to the House Floor, citing only one article relative to “insurrection.” This will allow her to skip past an investigation and make the articles as simple and direct as possible, capable of being voted on this week.

But I think she’s still going to run out of time.

The Senate, which would still have to have a trial, will be out of session until January 19^th (or the day before Biden is inaugurated), so Trump will be gone a day later anyway.

Now, could they still choose to hold the trial in the Senate once Schumer is in charge?

Sure.

It wouldn’t kick Trump out of office, however.

Here’s what would need to happen:

1. After a trial (which could be mercifully short) the Senate would have to vote by a 2/3rds margin of the Senators present to convict Trump.[1]
2. After a conviction they would have to have a separate vote – this time only by a simple majority – to disqualify Trump from holding and enjoying “any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

My understanding is, that if this second vote were to happen, not only could he not run again, but he would also stop getting his Presidential pension, his travel allowance, his secret service protection and maybe his Presidential Library.[2]

Would the be able to get this done?

I don’t know, it’s probably still a long shot. The difference is that now we have a 50-50 split in the Senate, and Trump endangered the lives of every legislator and especially the legislative leadership with his reckless incitement.

But are there enough Republicans willing to enrage Trump’s loyalists?

Not so sure about that.

[1] Some commentators have noted that conflicted Senators could simply not show up for the vote, so if 20 Republican Senators skip out, they would only need 54 votes to convict, with a few Republican Senators – maybe Romney, Murkowski and two others – voting to convict.

[2] The funds for these are mostly raised privately, as I understand.