So, as Donald Trump is ruining everything all at once and in monumental fashion, the question in this story’s title presents itself.
I was blogging at Emptywheel a few days ago and, in response to a comment below Marcy’s Newsom/Trump/National Guard story, I posted this (the version here is slightly edited from the EW blogpost, and a Presidential Pardon clause is added):
Proposed text of the 28th Amendment:
____________________________
No person shall be a candidate for the office of President, or elected or appointed to it, who has been convicted, by a jury, of felony criminal activity in a court of the United States or of the Various State and Territorial Criminal Judiciaries thereof.
A subsequent exoneration from such a conviction, however achieved, will not annul this proscription from Office, unless a conviction will have been found, by an Appellate Court of the Jurisdiction that issued the Guilty Verdict, to have been politically promulgated, and had therefore been expunged.
Whoever shall be the President at the time of the Constitutional Inception of this Amendment, shall Themselves be subject to its Proscriptions, and their Vice President shall assume the Office of President if violation of this Amendment is found to be supported by Court records.
The Supreme Court will rule those records either Valid or Invalid if the President in question contests their applicability by Refusal to Resign, and they shall convene immediately upon the presentation of such records to the Court, submitted by any incumbent Governor of one or more of the States, following this Amendment's formal inclusion into the US Constitution — if such presentation shall occur no more than 15 days following said Ratification of this Amendment.
There shall be no Presidential Immunity from prosecution, either for criminal activity or violations of the US Constitution itself, whether committed in a personal, official, or unofficial capacity.
The Power of the Presidency to issue Pardons shall not extend to family members of the President, or business associates, or campaign donors, or persons who have been convicted of crimes committed at the behest of or for the benefit of the President, or to preemptive Pardons, or to the President pardoning himself.
____________________________
Below that, I posted a name-suggestion for it: “The People’s Impeachment Amendment.”
If you go to that EW comment thread, there’s one salient point raised, but I think I addressed it there adequately, at least in part.
It’s important to acknowledge that this is targeted at Trump, in exactly the way the GOP says that the 14th Amendment was targeted toward just the Confederacy, and this one actually does target him (even if it doesn’t get ratified before the end of his Presidency). Nonetheless, it also establishes a new qualification for the Presidency going forward, as well as new and clarified limits to the executive Pardon power and to Presidential immunity that SCOTUS recently expanded. He’s not named, but it’s also not ambiguous as to who inspired it and who is the intended subject of it.
I could go on, but I’d rather like to hear what others think.
