Category Archives: Fifth Amendment

FridayJan15,2021at12:15AM

Should Joe Biden attempt to "look forward" and fail to hold the soon-to-be-not-president accountable for his actions, not only will he suffer the same ignominy that befell Gerald Ford in the wake of the Nixon pardon, but he will also guarantee a Democrat annihilation in the 2022 midterms and beyond.

The Democrats fortunes, however, are not the point.

Hoping to dodge the fallout that followed In the wake of Barack Obamas ill-advised (guided by "norms") decision to "look forward" after the misdeeds of the George W. Bush administration would be stunningly hypocritical. You simply cannot mouth the words "no one is above the law" and then short-circuit the law because its ... uncomfortable.

There is a massive record that exists already, used as a basis for the wholly successful impeachment by the House. The Mueller Report oft vilified but still left simmering spells out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice. Start there, Merrick Garland. And subpoena those tawdry pardon recipients who no longer enjoy Fifth Amendment protections on the subject.

But look at everything because dozens of allegations go beyond the abandonment or destruction of the aforementioned norms. The past decisions of the DOJ, or the FBI, or any other body with jurisdiction not to investigate or bring charges are not dispositive. Take the time NOW to render essential justice.

While many smile at the prospect of orange jumpsuits lets all realize the result is less important than the process, if only marginally. A factual record is paramount, as it will guide the decision-making and legislation of the future.

To wit, Congressman Huizenga, your recorded vote on electoral certification will stand forever as a pathetic attempt to gloss over your recorded signature on Ken Paxtons unconstitutional lawsuit.

Some guidance is gained, and some lessons are learned, harder than others.

Richard Wolfe

Park Township

Read more:
Letter: Hard lessons we are learning - Opinion - HollandSentinel.com

Updated at 4 p.m.: Revised to reflect statements from attorneys involved in the case.

The states highest criminal court agreed to review the murder conviction of Roy Oliver, a former Balch Springs police officer who fatally shot a Black teenager while on-duty in 2017.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced Wednesday that it will examine the case but will not hear oral arguments in the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards.

Oliver, 41, was convicted of murder in 2018 and sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Jordan was leaving a party the night of April 29, 2017, with his two brothers and two friends when Oliver, who is white, shot into the car as it was driving away. Gunshots had been fired nearby by people unaffiliated with the party, and the other teens in the car have said they were driving away because they were afraid.

Oliver testified that he thought the car was going to hit his partner, who had responded with him to a complaint about a loud party.

During the trial, Olivers partner, Tyler Gross, testified he didnt fear that he was going to be run over by the car during the incident.

Mike Snipes, a former Dallas County prosecutor who won the murder conviction against Oliver, said hes not surprised to see the case move so far in the appeals process because of its significance.

We feel very confident about what we did procedurally and at trial during that case, and so I welcome the review, Snipes said. I just think at the end of the day, the conviction will be upheld.

Robert Gill, Olivers attorney, said the appeal is largely related to Garrity v. New Jersey, a 1967 Supreme Court decision that says law enforcement officers and other public employees have Fifth Amendment protections when they give a statement about an incident, meaning the statement cant be used against them in criminal proceedings.

Olivers lawyers argue that some information that Oliver gave in initial statements after he shot Jordan should have been withheld.

There isnt very much Texas law on the issue surrounding the Garrity case and an individuals Fifth Amendment rights ... so were glad to see the court wants to review that, Gill said.

Lee Merritt, an attorney who represents Jordans family, said the same issue that came up early on in the trial.

We actually dont have any issue with the review. We dont believe that particularly on that very narrow issue we dont believe that it will be significant enough to overturn the results of the case, he said.

Merritt said Jordans family continues to mourn his death and that their civil lawsuit is still active.

Oliver appealed his case to the 5th Court of Appeals in Dallas, which ruled last August to uphold the conviction.

Olivers lawyers argued that a jury would have agreed that Oliver was acting to protect his partner had they received different instructions before deliberating.

There is no timeline for the Court of Criminal Appeals to make a decision.

Oliver is currently serving his 15-year sentence at the W. F. Ramsey prison in Rosharon, Texas.

Staff writer Dana Branham contributed to this report.

More here:
States highest criminal court to review murder conviction of Roy Oliver, ex-cop who killed 15-year-old - The Dallas Morning News

For the past several years, Sean Kennedy, a Loyola law professor and his students noticed a troubling pattern forming within the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department and its well-documented deputy gang problem.

A sheriff downplays or denies the problem of the deputy cliques.

A scandal erupts, usually from a lawsuit or reporting by the Los Angeles Times, exposing one of the deputy gangs and alleged misconduct like lying in court or during investigations.

The sheriff pledges to investigate the issue.

The findings of those investigations such as those promised by former sheriffs like John Scott and Jim McDonnell are never released to the public.

And the gangs, some of whom have a history of violence and harassment toward fellow department employees and members of the public, live on in relative secrecy.

Despite a growing list of allegations of misconduct by deputy gangs revealed in various commission reports and external investigations, Kennedy, who is also a member of the Sheriffs Civilian Oversight Commission, said the Sheriffs Department has struggled to address the issue within its ranks.

To move the needle toward more answers, Kennedy and his students wanted to create a single document that lays out all that is known including from findings from federal commissions, county inspector general reports, civilian commission hearings, court documents, news articles, interviews with former deputies about the departments deputy gangs.

After 24 months, the report was published Wednesday, and documents at least 18 deputy gangs or cliques that are suspected to have been operating within the Sheriffs Department for the past 50 years.

There have been so many pledges to get to the bottom of this issue that go nowhere, Kennedy said. Theyve been actively hidden too long.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva introduced a new policy in August, banning deputies from forming and participating in cliques and sub-groups. He also committed to investigating allegations of a deputy gang controlling the Sheriffs Compton Station. The department said Wednesday a study looking at deputy gangs, conducted by the Rand Corporation, is set to wrap up in the next few months. The FBI also has ongoing probes into the departments gangs.

The Sheriffs Department called the Loyola Law School report non-peer-reviewed, leaning on non-academically acceptable citations and unproven allegations as a primary basis for content.

The Department will examine the report and extrapolate everything which may be helpful towards positive organizational change, the Sheriffs Department said Wednesday through a spokesman.

The totality of the evidence, when viewed as a whole is very strong, that there is a longstanding, internal gang problem that goes unaddressed in the department, Kennedy said, responding to the departments comments. For accuracy, Kennedy said he ran the finalized report by five former high-ranking Sheriffs Department officials who recently retired.

Some of the gangs profiled in the report have been inactive for decades. Others are characterized more as subgroups with no evidence of gang-like activity.

However, several other deputy gangs, such as the Banditos, Vikings and Executioners, are suspected to be active and carry with them a slew of allegations of violence, harassment, and intimidation toward other department employees and members of the public, the report said.

Kennedy said he worries most about how these deputy gangs harm the communities they police. Most of the known deputy gangs operate within Sheriff stations located in communities that are inhabited predominantly by people of color, the report said.

Operating out of the Sheriffs Compton Station, the Executioners are alleged to have hosted celebrations after a deputy shot someone, later inking the deputy involved in the shooting with the gangs symbol, a skull wearing a Nazi helmet with CPT on front and a rifle encircled by flames, the report said, referencing Austreberto Gonzalez, a deputy at the station who shared the account during a 2020 deposition. Black and female deputies are reportedly barred from joining the gang.

Gonzalez also testified that the two Compton Station deputies involved in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Andres Guardado in June Miguel Vega and Christian Hernandez were prospects looking to join the Executioners at the time of the shooting, the report said. Vega, who fired the shots that killed Guardado in Gardena, has remained silent, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment throughout the Sheriffs investigation and during a November coroners inquest.

The Vikings gang, previously operating out of the now-defunct Lynwood Station, has been accused by Black and Latino residents of taking part in shootings, killings, beatings, racial-profiling incidents and illegal searches in an effort to terrorize their community. One federal judge called the gang a neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang.

The Century Station in Lynwood, the report said, is occupied by two other gangs, the Regulators and Spartans.

Some deputy gangs found themselves at the center of wide-ranging investigations into deputy misconduct, including the countys jail abuse scandals that stained the departments legacy from the late 1990s and well into the 2010s, leading to the convictions of more than a dozen Sheriffs officials, including former Sheriff Lee Baca and former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, a recorded member of the Vikings, according to the report.

In the Antelope Valley communities of Palmdale and Lancaster, deputies with Rattlesnakes symbols and skulls tattooed on them have become synonymous with discriminatory policing against Black residents, particularly among those living in public housing, the report said. Quoting a U.S. Department of Justice report from 2013, the report said deputies associated with the Rattlesnakes gang took part in unlawful searches and seizures and unreasonable use of force.

Gangs that operated in county jails included the 3000 Boys, 2000 Boys and the Posse.

In 1998, a Black man with a mental illness died after deputies in the Twin Towers jail beat him, the report said.

Days later, eight members of the Posse beat another mentally ill man, leaving flashlight marks on his back and boot prints on his side, the report said. A 1999 federal commission report highlighted the gang and its practice of violently targeting inmates with mental illness.

The 3000 boys were also known to take part in excessive force against inmates, according to the 2012 report by the Los Angeles County Citizens Commission on Jail Violence.

The Loyola report also found that among all 133 deputy shootings in the past five years, from November 2015 to November 2020, the stations that led the list in the most shootings, each has an active deputy gang, as well as a history of complaints, reporting, and lawsuits alleging deputy-gang misconduct. The East Los Angeles Station where the Banditos are said to be operating, topped the reports list with 20 shootings. About 80% of those shot by deputies were Black or Latino, the report said.

The report calls on the Sheriffs Department to address the gang issue by enforcing its new policy, prohibiting subgroups. Also, it asks the department to require existing employees to fill out a tattoo image form, something Villanueva and McDonnell have previously refused to subject their deputies to. Any findings the department has on its cliques or gangs should also be made public through the public records act, the report said.

Other suggested solutions include having prosecutors ask deputies who take part as witnesses in criminal cases to state whether or not they are affiliated in a deputy gang. The report also called on judges to allow defense attorneys to cross-examine deputies about their gang-affiliated tattoos.

Really they need to just release the info and let various people and groups investigate, Kennedy said of the Sheriffs Department. If its just as some say, a harmless social group, then nothing will come of it. But the more startling allegations that should concern us all.

Continued here:
Theyve been hidden too long: Report details Los Angeles Sheriffs deputy gangs and violence toward communities of color - East Bay Times

Cleveland Grover Meredith, Jr., who goes by Cleve, grew up in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. His father owns a hundred-year-old company that makes utility poles, and his mother was a homemaker who later became an interior decorator. He had two sisters, one of whom died young, of brain cancer. He attended the prestigious Lovett School, in north Atlanta, where nearly all his classmates were white, and where, a few of those classmates told me recently, the N-word was occasionally heard in the hallwaysmaking it depressingly similar, one said, to many schools in the area at the time. Meredith was an upbeat kid. One of his classmates, Dean Temple, who is now a stage actor, recalled a class trip to the U.S. Capitol. Most of the details were fuzzy, Temple said, but he could still recall the smile on Cleves face.

In high school, Meredith twice led Lovett to cross-country championships. He was so damn fast, he seemed to be on his own, a former teacher at Lovett told me, adding that Meredith set himself apart and above others. He was a popular and good-looking guy, Matt Arnett, whos now a music producer in Atlanta, said. A former family friend told me, He was about cars, running, and ego. He drove a Datsun 280ZX, and won the best car award in his senior year. He started a detailing business, Temple said, mainly so that he could drive fancy vehicles, and he painted flames down the side of the family station wagon. Patrick Brown, who became a lifelong friend, described a trip to the Grand Canyon during which Meredith, goofing off with other kids, slathered himself with ketchup and lay down in the middle of the road. The first people to pull up were the fucking game wardens, Brown said. I still have the citation. But that was Cleve. He loved to pull pranks. Brown went on, I dont see him as a violent person. Just a high-energy guy. Electric is the word Id use. Tries to suck the marrow out of life. He added, At the end of the day, I dont know if theres a joke element to it.

By it, Brown meant Merediths espousal, in the past decade, of extreme and increasingly paranoid right-wing views, including the set of wild delusions that circulate among those who believe in the QAnon conspiracy, which holds that many Democrats in Washington and Hollywood are satanists and pedophiles. Meredith has shared those views on Facebook and elsewhere; at times, there appeared to be an element of trolling involved. But he could also seem deadly serious. Last week, Meredith was one of the first thirteen people charged in connection with the violence that followed a rally on January 6th for Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. The next day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference calling on Vice-President Mike Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Meredith allegedly texted an acquaintance, Thinking about heading over to Pelosi CUNTs speech and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV. He appended the purple devil emoji. He allegedly had two firearms and thousands of rounds of ammo in his trailer.

Brown, who voted for Trump but said he didnt believe that thered been widespread election fraud and that theres no place for violence at any of these demonstrations, told me that hes still trying to make sense of it all. When we spoke, he was not yet aware that Meredith evidently never made it to the Capitol. Maybe he desecrated that place, Brown said, of his friend, and if he did Id beat the shit out of him. He went on, But if I was gonna go to battle and war for this country, I would want him on my side, next to me, in the trench. Hes a warrior, in a way.

Before graduating from Lovett, in 1986, Meredith served on the homecoming court, and he was active in vestry, a group connected with the schools chapel that did volunteer work and assisted in worship services. Always carrying that cross, the family friend told me. For his yearbook page, he chose a quote from Life in the Fast Lane, by the Eagles: Blowin and burnin, blinded by thirst, didnt see the stop sign, took a turn for the worst. After Lovett, he went to Sewanee, an Episcopal liberal-arts college in the hills of Tennessee. He had not been especially interested in politics in high school, and didnt seem to be at Sewanee, either, Arnett said. Its not exactly a bastion of militant conservatism, he added. I dont think he changed much there.

After college, he opened a car wash north of Atlanta. He got married and had two sons. He enjoyed driving Jet Skis and motorcycles and big trucks and trailers, Arnett said. I never got the impression that all that was funded by the car wash. I think he had family money. In recent years, Meredith raced Porsches and drove speedboats. He loved his toys, Brown said. On Facebook, Meredith posted pictures of those toys, and began sharing his opinions about the state of the country. After Barack Obama was elected President, those posts became exceptionally racist, a former classmate told me. She recalled one that referred to Obama as a porch monkeyshe added, of the slur, I thought that was of a vintage before my time. She unfollowed Meredith but still occasionally saw his posts. It seemed to her that he was disturbed by a world that had changed.

Temple thought so, too. I confronted him about his outspoken hatred of Muslims, he said. It struck him as a clichd, right-wing-media, knee-jerk take on the ills of the world. Meredith, to Temples surprise, responded with a seemingly open mind. I thought, Huh, that went well. But he really turned into a troll, and kind of a cult member, eventually.

Arnett, who tends to vote for Democrats, told me that his own Facebook page was a place where people from the right and left would debate. And Cleve was one of those people that would jump in with just the craziest, most outlandish things. One of Merediths recurring themes was that the Confederate flag represented heritage, not hate, he said. Meredith made a version of this argument after a white man named Dylann Roof killed nine members of a Black church in Charlestonat which point, Arnett said, he unfriended him. His posts just became so virulently racist and unmoored from fact, I drew the line, he said. Meredith was upset by the unfriending, and the two men had a long private exchange about it through Facebook. Honestly, Meredith wrote, I think the only way to solve these major issues and Im not talking about just racial/social issues, Im talking about the whole gamut (economic, military, debt, etc) is to flush everybody (both sides of course) out of Washington and start over... to hit the reset button.... Just not sure how we do that.

A few weeks before Meredith sent that message, Donald Trump announced that he was running for President. Meredith was thrilled. Somebody like Cleve was the perfect target for Trumps rhetoric, Arnett told me. Its much easier to understand why, perhaps, lower-income people would be susceptible to that talk, he added. But I think there are people of greater means, like Cleve, who see the way of life changing from white control of everything that has made them very comfortable. Meredith also enjoyed Trumps owning of the libs, Arnett said.

Though Meredith lost a few friends and followers on Facebook, he also gained new ones. Suleiman Fetrat, an Afghan-American former defense contractor, who has a degree in political science, is a few years older than Meredithold enough, he told me, to have been fooled by both sides. A mutual friend connected him with Meredith in late 2015, and Fetrat described to me a warm online relationship that transcended their divergent politics. (An ardent Bernie Sanders supporter, Fetrat sat out the 2016 election, then voted reluctantly for Joe Biden in 2020.) They never met in person, though, and Fetrat took notice of Merediths evolution with a degree of detachment, watching him parrot the Gateway Pundit, Trumps Twitter feed, Fox News, and, eventually, QAnon supportersand finding it all more fascinating than frightening. He took the red pill with the Q stuff, Fetrat said. I was grateful for that. My specialty is political ideology. I was an observer of this whole thing. Fetrat knew many Trump supporters, but Cleve was beyond that, he told me, adding, I hesitate to say this, but he and others like him are like the American Taliban. The difference, Fetrat believed, was that Merediths tough talk was, in his view, basically bluster. He enjoyed tweaking Meredith, and being his libtard pal. I dont think Cleve would ever hurt anybody, he said. Hes all nave braggadocio. Bark, no bite. He added, We always promised to meet each other. He would always say, When it all goes down, Ill protect your children. As much as we disagreed, he had my back.

In the spring of 2018, Meredith put up a billboard near his business, Car Nutz Car Wash, that read, simply, #QANON. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story about it; Meredith told the paper that he was a patriot among the millions who love this country. Then he put the hashtag on the car washs marquee. A real-estate appraiser named Chris got into an argument with him about it, and later wrote about the exchange in a private Facebook group. I told him that it is dumb to have the name of a batty insane organization flashing on their sign, that it drives away customers like me and makes them look like idiots, Chris wrote. Oh so you must be a Hillary supporter, Meredith said to him, according to Chriss account. I bet you are on welfare, and you are unemployed. Meredith continued to yell at me as other customers were in their cars in line, hearing all of it, Chris wrote. Soon afterward, Meredith began driving a blue two-door Saab decorated with a giant law-enforcement star bearing the name Donald Trump. He posted pictures of the vehicle on Facebook with the caption Theres a new Sheriff in town.

It was around this time that Meredith and his wife separated, and he moved from Cobb Countya once conservative area just north of Atlanta that has lately turned blueto Hiawassee, a small, deeply conservative town in the north Georgia mountains. (His ex-wife did not reply to an interview request.) Merediths parents had, at this point, become concerned enough about their son to call the Hiawassee Police Department to give them a heads-up. They wanted me to be aware of his involvement with Q, and the social-media posts hed been making, Paul Smith, Hiawassees chief of police, told me. (Merediths mother declined to comment for this story. His father could not be reached.) They described their son as a great person who had fallen from grace into far-right-extremist territory, Smith said, adding, They were letting me know that he seems like he could be dangerous and hes living in your city now. Merediths parents told Smith that they had communicated with the F.B.I., and the Hiawassee police passed along word to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Smith said that there was an investigation but that he didnt know the details.

In March, 2019, Meredith showed up at Lovett in his unmistakable Saab to protest an appearance by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, who was there to speak about current affairs. Fairly anodyne stuff, one of Merediths old classmates told me, of Meachams talk. But Meredith ended up skirmishing with campus security. It got kind of scuffly, the classmate said. Security escorted Meredith from the eventone classmate heard a rumor from friends that they took him to the OK Caf, which, until recently, prominently displayed a carving of the old Georgia flag. Whatd they do, this classmate speculated, laughing, go prop him under a Confederate flag for some fried chicken? Meredith was banned from Lovett after the incident. By March of last year, he was posting angry comments on his classs Facebook page. This was a page that has nothing to do with politics, the woman who unfollowed him told me. Meredith was posting things like, Democrats are idiots, theyre destroying America. Blah, blah, blah, she said. The page is devoted to who got married, who had a baby, who got a job! So it was weird.

After the coronavirus pandemic hit Georgia, Meredith became a strident opponent of mask-wearing, and his Facebook posts started earning him temporary suspensions from the platform. After his first suspension, Fetrat told me, He became more and more vitriolic, less willing to share where he got his info. Posting fewer links. He was also posting pictures of increasingly aggressive activity on his toys, Fetrat said: The last picture I saw on his Facebook feed, hed flipped a Bobcat front-end loader. At a certain point, you stop doing that kind of stupid thing. But he didnt. Hes immature.

In June, after George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, a group of Hiawassee residents held a demonstration in the town about police brutality. Meredith showed up in loafers and khaki shorts holding a IWI Tavor X95 rifle. Witnesses say that he held it up in a menacing way. The North Georgia News spoke to Meredith for a story about the demonstration; he told the paper that he was a fifth-generation Atlantan who supported America, freedom and President Donald Trump. As for the protest, he said, Its basically a political stunt done by the higher ups, just paying people to screw everything up. He added, I sincerely believe the New World Order, Cabal, Deep Statewhatever you want to call itwants society to devolve into a race war so that its much easier to take over. In August, after an Illinois teen-ager named Kyle Rittenhouse killed two protesters for racial justice and injured another with an AR-15-style rifle in Wisconsin, Meredith posted a photoshopped Robocop poster bearing Rittenhouses face and the tagline PART KID, PART COP, ALL PATRIOT.

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The Georgia Dad Who Said That He Wanted to Kill Nancy Pelosi - The New Yorker

Item 1.01. Entry Into a Material Definitive Agreement.

On January 8, 2021 (the "Effective Date"), Good Times Restaurants Inc. (the"Company") and each of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, as guarantors, enteredinto a Fifth Amendment to Credit Agreement and Waiver (the "Amendment") withrespect to the Company's Credit Agreement with Cadence Bank, N.A., as lender("Cadence") entered into on September 8, 2016, as amended on September 11, 2017by the First Amendment to Credit Agreement (the "First Amendment"), as furtheramended on October 31, 2018 by the Second Amendment to Credit Agreement (the"Second Amendment"), as further amended on February 21, 2019 by the ThirdAmendment to Credit Agreement (the "Third Amendment"), and further amended onDecember 9, 2019 by the Fourth Amendment to Credit Amendment (the "FourthAmendment" and, together with the First Amendment, the Second Amendment and theThird Amendment, the "Credit Agreement").

The Amendment, among other things, modifies the Credit Agreement as follows: (a)extends the Maturity Date (as defined in the Credit Agreement) to January 31,2023; (b) provides that the commitments of the lenders will be reduced from$11,000,000 as of the Effective Date of the Amendment to: (i) $10,000,000 onMarch 31, 2021; and (ii) $8,000,000 on July 1, 2021; (c) provides that therequired Consolidated Leverage Ratio (as defined in the Credit Agreement) as ofthe end of any fiscal quarter is greater than 5.15 to 1.00; and (d) providesCadence's formal waiver of the event of default caused by the Company's failureto comply with the required Consolidated Leverage Ratio then in effect for thefiscal quarter ended March 31, 2020.

The forgoing description of the Amendment is qualified in its entirety byreference to the full text of the Amendment, a copy of which is filed in Exhibit10.1 to this current report on Form 8-K and is incorporated by reference herein.

The information contained in Item 1.01 regarding the Amendment is incorporatedby reference herein.

Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits.

*Filed herewith

Edgar Online, source Glimpses

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GOOD TIMES RESTAURANTS INC. : Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an...

Over and over, he gave Trump cover and vouched for him with the evangelical voters who were a crucial part of Trumps governing coalition. He stayed when families were separated at the border and when the president pressured a foreign leader to find dirt on Biden. He stayed through the tweetstorms and tantrums and false claims of election fraud. He tends to seek approval from something bigger and more powerful than himself, Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister who prayed and read scripture with Pence when he was in Congress, told me. And in this case, its the president.

Read: A survival guide for the Trump White House

Embracing Trump was always a gamble. As Brendan Buck, a former House Republicanleadership aide, told me, There are no happy endings when it comes to Trump. In this partnership, the president got more out of the bargain. Pence comes away damaged, while Trump, at least, got a vice president who ran a functioning operation.

Pences office was a corner of the Trump administration that actually resembled a working executive office. His staff didnt turn over every three days. There was little public drama and, whatever you may think of his politics, a sense of mission. Career government officials with no love for the president told me that Pence was a fair intermediary whod listen to their arguments. Joseph Grogan, who left his job as the director of the White Houses Domestic Policy Council in the spring, said that when people ask him who they should call at the White House with a question or problem, he suggests Pences office. I tell them that thats the only place you can really go right now, because theyre still working, he said. Now that Trump is holed up in the White House nursing his grievances, Pence is, in some respects, stepping into the role of acting president. Yesterday, he went to the Capitol to thank the National Guard troops deployed to protect the building ahead of Inauguration Daythe sort of gesture a president would normally make.

Until the elections grisly aftermath, Trump seemed positioned to become a GOP kingmaker whod hold considerable sway over the political fortunes of any West Wing aspirants, including his vice president. (That is, if he himself didnt run in 2024.) Now the party faces a reckoning. Trumps inexcusable behavior likely blew himself up politically, which may become a huge gift to the Republican Party, said a former senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly. The official framed Pence as a casualty of Trumps recklessness. His recent treatment of Pence showed a complete lack of character. What Trump was imploring Pence to do by rejecting the elections certification was not legal and not constitutional Its ridiculous.

Yet Pence has no obvious place in GOP electoral politics even if his party repudiates Trump. Grateful though they might be that Pence honored the popular vote, independents and Never Trump Republicans have plenty of plausible alternatives when the 2024 primary season rolls around. Consistent and unapologetic critics of the president, such as Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, would most likely attract those voters. In the meantime, the Trump base is more likely to gravitate toward one of the presidents adult children, or maybe one of the two GOP senators who pushed to reject the electoral-vote count: Ted Cruz of Texas or Josh Hawley of Missouri. Pence was never a lock for the presidency, but now he simply has no lane left.

The hardest core of the Trump crowd is going to turn on himand Trump is going to make sure that they do, Doug Heye, a former Republican National Committee spokesperson, told me.

This week, Pence offered Trump one last act of service, rejecting House Speaker Nancy Pelosis call for him to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and bounce the president from office. But come January 20, hell be in the same position as he was after the Capitol riot: out in the cold.

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Mike Pence Has Nowhere to Go - The Atlantic

Mark Graber, Regents Professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, and Sanford Levinson, Garwood Centennial Chair at University of Texas at Austin School of law, discuss the overlegalizing of the impeachment of Donald Trump in the wake of the violence at the U.S. Capitol...

The monopolistic control lawyers and the Supreme Court assert over constitutional meaning is threatening to pervert and sidetrack congressional efforts to free Americans of a president who, even in his last ten days of office, terrifies millions of citizens across the political spectrum. The Constitution offers at least two paths by which we the people can either fire a grossly deficient president or prevent an out-of-control lame duck from wreaking havoc on the body politic. One is impeachment, which appears increasingly likely in the House of Representatives, perhaps even early this week. The other is the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that the vice-president handpicked by the president lead what might be perceived as a palace coup against the Leader. Common sense and the Constitution support both means for ridding the United States of rule by Donald Trump. Both risk being sidetracked by unnecessary legal technicalities that only lawyers who demand, contrary to common sense and the Constitution, that the process for maintaining the integrity of the Government ought to prioritize legal formalism over political substance.

Overlegalization is infecting impeachment and efforts to employ Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. The Congressional articles of impeachment, drafted by lawyers, assume Donald Trump can be impeached for inciting an insurrection against the government only if his speech could be prosecuted under the First Amendment. Prominent voices complain that the processes demanded by Section Four, which require a judgment that the president can no longer fulfil the duties of office, cannot be done with dispatch because the Vice President must provide elaborate proof by reliable medical evidence that the president is in fact physically or mentally impaired. Perhaps both propositions make sense to well-trained lawyers. The problem is that both defy common sense and, we suggest, the Constitution. The impeachment clause is best interpreted as permitting the impeachment of a President who incites insurrection, even if, by stipulation, the incitement might not be subject to prosecution under the Supreme Courts First Amendment jurisprudence. There is no need to subject a president to elaborate tests and then await a medical diagnosis to remove a president who has demonstrated to any cogent observer a manifest unwillingness or inability to perform the duties of office.

The present Articles of impeachment against Donald Trump track the conditions on which the Supreme Court has declared the government may punish advocacy of criminal misconduct. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1968) is the most important Supreme Court precedent. That case arose after Clarence Brandenburg was convicted by a state court of criminal syndicalism for telling a Ku Klux Klan gathering in Ohio that they should seek revengeance against the Jews and Catholics ruining the country. The Court decision unanimously (and, we believe, correctly) overturning that conviction held that all advocacy, however repellant, is protected by the First Amendment. Prohibition is legitimate if and only if the speaker engaged in incitement rather than advocacy. The difference between advocacy and incitement is a legal one. The speaker must not only try to whip up the crowd to act, but the lawless action must also be likely to occur as a result of the incitement. One might view incitement in this context as appealing to the emotions of an audience to provoke them to act and, to act now. The Court in Brandenburg added that punishment is legitimate only if the lawless action produced by the incitement was imminent. If, on the other hand, the incitement is to act tomorrow, instead of right now, then there would, in Louis Brandeis important formulation during the 1920s, be time for good speech to overcome the negative effects of the bad speech that the state was seeking to punish. Even meeting all these criteria might not be enough to justify punishment under First Amendment precedent. The justices insist the lawless action be likely to cause significant damage. All these elements are set out in the congressional indictment against Trump. That document declares Trump willfully incited violence against the Government of the United States, that Trump incited imminent lawless action, that incitement caused violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts, and that those acts were foreseeabl[e].

We have grave reservations about whether progressives would interpret the First Amendment as not protecting the same speech Donald Trump made on January 6th, 2021, if that speech had been made by a different person. The classic marker distinguishing incitement from mere protected advocacy is whether time exists so that bad speech can be corrected by good speech. Such time clearly existed outside of Congress on January 6th, 2021. Trump did not urge his followers to storm the castle immediately. After all, the demonstration was initially uptown relative to the Capitol. Protestors had to march down Pennsylvania Avenue. They might have then hesitated as to what to do next. John Stuart Mill, in his class On Liberty, says that it would be legitimate to punish someone advocating burning down a corn dealers home in front of the home itself. But if one is advocating merely a march on the home from miles away, the situation is entirely different. One may or may not agree, but a great deal of free-speech theory is built on that distinction.

Trump did not explicitly mention specific unlawful actions. Perhaps the crowd, like those listening to Marc Antonys eulogy to Julius Caesar, knew what he was really saying, but, like Shakespeares version of the clever Antony, Trump did not to use any magic words, such as invade the Capitol and terrorize the members of Congress. Moreover, the storming of Congress took place hours after he spoke to the gathering. All members of the mob had ample time to reflect on Trumps statements and make a deliberate decision about whether to violate the law. One suspects that many of those listening to Trump decided not to join the mob moving toward the Capitol or refrained from climbing the steps.

Imagine that Trump had won a narrow victory in the electoral college, because of what could legitimately be thought to be the suppression of Democratic votes or, even worse, because Republican legislatures simply substituted a Republican slate of electors for the Democratic electors who had seemingly won the popular vote in a state. Some prominent Democrat might have given a far more articulate version of the Trump speech to a crowd of progressive protestors enraged, say, by the decision of the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia legislatures to substitute Trump electors for the Biden electors chosen by a majority of state voters. That speech would clearly be protected under Brandenburg, and not because we are more inclined to protect Democrats than Republicans.

The real problem is equating the President of the United States with an ordinary citizen or even a prominent leader. Unlike ordinary citizens, Donald Trump took an oath to maintain and uphold the laws of the United States, including the laws he disagreed with. We have no doubt that the president or relevant decision-maker could have constitutionally fired for dereliction of duty any other law enforcement official who gave the same call for lawless action to the same potential mob. There is a difference between Martin Luther Kings calling for civil disobedience and the same call issued by those who have taken an oath to enforce the laws of the land. The President should not be an exception to the principle that those in charge of upholding the law should not encourage the violation of the law. Disciplining Trump by removing him from office is even more pressing that would be the case for an ordinary police officer who gave the same speech in the same circumstances. As Ross Perot argued in 1992, the President of the United States is only an employee of the American people, no more, no less. If he does not live up to his terms of employment, including basic fidelity to the Constitution that he swore an oath to uphold and protect, he should be fired.

Common sense suggests impeachment is warranted when the president encourages persons to violate federal laws or interfere with the implementation of federal laws in ways that are likely to cause significant damage. Impeachment is particularly warranted when the laws the president encourages others to violate are at the core of constitutional democracy in the United States. This common-sense standard leaves presidents free to complain about existing laws, challenge those laws in courts, and even refuse to implement laws they believe unconstitutional. Brandeiss claim in Whitney v. California (1927) that the First Amendment ought to protect the speech of persons whose advocacy of illegal conduct causes only minor harm, such as a trespass on unoccupied land, applies to presidential impeachment as well. Nevertheless, when a president, in essence, encourages a group of potentially peaceful protesters to transform themselves into an insurrectionary mob determined to interfere with members of Congress engaged in the solemn rite of certifying the identity of the next President of the United States, no one ought to care whether the First Amendments requirement of incitement and imminence or, for that matter, likelihood, are met.

Overlegalization is as much a plague on the Twenty-Fifth Amendment as on the impeachment process. The letter of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment suggests that implementation may be rapid. Make one of us the Vice-President and the other the cabinet, and we can produce the following letter in three minutes (90 seconds if we do not try to fix typos)

Dear Speaker of the House and President Pro Tem of the Senate:

The Vice President and majority of the cabinet have concluded that the President is unable to fulfil his duties. Therefore, under Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President will serve as President until further notice.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

Vice President Sandy Levinson

Secretary of Everything Mark A. Graber

The only reason this process might take longer than three minutes is if we had to document that the President is unable to fulfil his duties. The Constitution does not require such documentation. Nor does common sense.

Consider the various ways we might document that Donald Trump is unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency that would meet a more stringent Section Four. If a neurologist took an x-ray of Donald Trumps brain that showed a deformity or conducted other tests demonstrating chemical imbalance that caused him to incite insurrection against the United States, Section Four would be met. We might find a psychiatrist or psychologist, many of whom we suspect are willing to testify that Trump has a psychiatric or psychological condition that makes him unable at crucial times to perform the duties of office. An obvious problem is whether Donald Trump would agree even to an x-ray, let alone a full neurological workup or psychiatric interview that could serve as the basis for a professional diagnosis. Would we really be dependent on his cooperation? Can we imagine forcing him to sit down and speak to the psychiatrist or taking the neurological tests? Could we substitute Mary Trumps observations over the years about Donald Trumps behavior?

Requiring the Vice President and cabinet to run through these hoops defies common sense. Donald Trumps actions before, on, and after January 6th, 2021, demonstrate that he is unable to fulfil the duties of office. No one at this point should need neurological, psychiatric, or behavioral testimony to explain or document this inability. If a president repeatedly and at crucial times fails to fulfil the duties of office, that president should be considered constitutionally unable to fulfill those duties. Explanations are for doctors to hypothesize, not for politicians to worry about. Courts sometimes take judicial notice of what is obvious to all. Judicial notice, should be taken that Trump is not fit to exercise presidential powersincluding powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces to do God knows whatfor even one more day.

Permitting the Vice-President and majority of the cabinet to determine whether a president is unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency no more threatens a coup than permitting a persons chosen spouse and family members to determine that they are incompetent. The President selects the Vice-President and cabinet. Cabinet members can be fired at will. The Yiddish proverb that if two people say you are drunk, you should go lie down provides the appropriate standard. If the Vice President and majority of the cabinet, who have every incentive to be sycophants, maintain the President is unable to fulfill the duties of office, the President should go lie down.

Constitutional systems are run by common sense, not by legal technicalities. We should not overlegalize impeachment by demanding that the president engages in speech unprotected by the first amendment. Common sense dictates that a president who encourages a mob to interfere with congressional proceedings ought not to remain in office, even if such speech might not be subject to criminal punishment. We should not overlegalize the 25th Amendment by demanding professional certification. A president who publicly fails to fulfil the basic duties of office ought to be removed, even if no professional can document immediately the neurological or psychiatric causes of this failure. Presidents, in short, must meet the minimum standards of competence suggested by common sense. Donald Trump has not. Anyone, not a trained lawyer can easily realize his incapacity to exercise power. To the extent that lawyers do not, that raises more questions about the meaning of thinking like a lawyer than about the fitness of Donald Trump to continue in office.

Mark A. Graber is the Regents Professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. He is the author of A New Introduction to American Constitutionalism (Oxford 2013) and Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (Cambridge 2006), a coeditor with Sandy Levinson and Mark Tushnet of Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? (2018) and the American Constitutionalism series with Howard Gillman and Keith Whittington. All told Professor Graber has published more than one hundred books, articles or essays on constitutional law, constitutional history, constitutional development and other subjects in which constitutional is used as an adjective.

Professor Sanford Levinson is the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Professor Levinson has published approximately 400 articles, books, book reviews, and commentaries with various journals and major publications. He has been a visiting faculty member at a number of universities both in the US and abroad in London, Paris, Jerusalem, Australia, and New Zealand.

Suggested Citation: Mark Graber and Sanford Levinson, Overlegalizing Impeachment And The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, JURIST Academic Commentary, January 13, 2021, https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2021/01/graber-levinson-impeachment-amendment/.

This article was prepared for publication by Vishwajeet Deshmukh, a JURIST staff editor. Please direct any questions or comments to him at commentary@jurist.org.

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

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Overlegalizing Impeachment and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment - JURIST

As Congress debates whether and how to remove Donald Trump from office, politicians and commentators have been quick to explore the Twenty-fifth Amendments procedure for removing a president due to an inability to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Late on Tuesday night, the House of Representatives approved a nonbinding resolution formally asking Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the Twenty-fifth; he has transmitted a letter saying that he will not do so. (Over the weekend, I made the case against using the Twenty-fifth.) The House is expected to turn immediately on Wednesday to pursuing a historic second impeachment against President Trump.

Meanwhile, though, a third option for removing Trump from office has been floated: to disqualify him via a little-known provision of the Fourteenth Amendment meant to restrict former Confederates from government service after the Civil War.

Advanced by historian Eric Foner and law professors Bruce Ackerman and Gerard Magliocca, and trumpeted by Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation (among others), its a worse idea than the Twenty-fifth Amendment plan. It shares with the Twenty-fifth Amendment approach the problem of novelty but has an even more tenuous connection to Trumps actions.

Impeachment, however, is solid, certain, and tested by long experience. It is not found in an obscure corner of the Constitution until recently familiar only to experts. Impeachment has been used by Congress throughout the nations history in response to the malfeasance of federal officials, including but not limited to presidents. That long history makes impeachment the correct tool to remove Trump.

Twenty individuals have been impeached by the House of Representatives, including 1 senator, 1 cabinet secretary, 1 Supreme Court justice, 3 presidents, and 14 federal judges. In 8 cases, the Senate voted to convict and remove from office. Another 8 cases produced an acquittal, and 3 times, the accused resigned and ended the process.

The first impeachment was perhaps the strangest. In 1797, Tennessee Senator William Blount was brought up on charges for conspiring with the British to seize Spanish lands along the Gulf Coast. Blount had represented North Carolina at the Constitutional Conventionwhich is to say, he was a signer of the document later used to prosecute him. The House impeached him on July 7, 1797, but the Senate expelled him the next day. The House subsequently drew up articles of impeachment for the former senator, but the Senate declined to take them up, saying it lacked jurisdiction. Ever since, members of Congress have been removed by expulsion rather than impeachment.

In the most recent pre-Trump impeachment cases, Judge Samuel Kent was impeached for sexual abuse and obstruction of justice in 2009, and Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. was impeached for taking bribes and for perjury in 2010. Kent resigned before the Senate could act; Porteous was convicted and removed from the bench. Both cases were heard by many current members of Congress; Adam Schiff, Hank Johnson, and Zoe Lofgren were among the House managersexperience that prepared them for that role in Trumps 2019 impeachment.

Rep. Alcee Hastings has a special expertise in impeachment proceedings, having been on both sides of them. He was a federal district court judge when, in 1988, he was impeached for bribery and perjury. He was convicted by the Senate and removed from office in 1989but he was then elected as a Democrat to Congress by the state of Florida in 1992. He is now the longest-serving member of the states congressional delegation. He voted for all three impeachments of judges that came up after his own impeachment, as well as the impeachment of President Trump, but opposed the impeachment of President Clinton.

All told, Congress has significant institutional experience, both historical and in present times, to carry out an impeachment that will earn widespread support. History buttresses legitimacy, which is crucial because removing a president from office has never been done before.

This is not the time to flex the Constitution, despite the need for urgency. Remember that creative approaches to the law played no small part in sparking the current crisis. The mob that descended on Washington assembled because Trump led them to believe that Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, could somehow decertify the Electoral College results and deliver a Trump victory. If Mike Pence does the right thing, Trump told the crowd on January 6, we win the election.

Trumps theory not only contradicted the role outlined for the vice president in the Electoral Count Act of 1887, but also would have transformed the vice presidency into a formidable office with the final say over who became president. The first vice president, John Adams, who considered it the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived, would have been shocked. He had great power and no one told him? Fortunately, as the New York Times has reported, Pences staff arranged to have a respected federal judge tweet out his understanding of the vice presidents limited role, an analysis that Pence immediately cited in his letter rejecting Trumps suggestion that he intervene in the Electoral College count.

As I wrote over the weekend, the Twenty-fifth Amendment is not well suited for the present circumstances. The text of the amendment speaks only of a situation in which the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. The amendments authors clearly had in mind a medical disability.

The Fourteenth Amendment route is even more of a stretch. Here is the relevant text, from section 3 of the amendment:

No Person shall . . . hold any office, civil or military, under the United States . . . who, having previously taken an oath . . . as an officer of the United States . . . to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

The texts generic language makes it seem like it applies to more than just ex-Confederates. Yet this passage was clearly meant to address a specific problem following the Civil War: how to keep secessionists away from power and prevent the old antebellum problems from resurfacing. After Reconstruction, the provision has been used only once: to keep socialist Victor Berger out of Congress during World War I. But even then, a successful court challenge allowed him to serve again.

To invoke either of the amendments now, for the first time, for a non-medical reason and against someone who wasnt alive during the Civil War, risks giving the appearance that the goal, however achieved, was more important than the process.

Removing a president from office is novel enough. Impeachment has a history that gives it extra heft. Congress should embrace its experience with impeachment and devote its energy to that path alone.

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The 14th Amendment Is Not an Alternative to Impeachment - The Bulwark

For those unfamiliar with lobbying and advocacy in the nation's capital, the connection between the National Association of Manufacturers and Republican politics may not be well known. To put it mildly, the two are inextricably linked, and have been for many years. There is, as a rule, no daylight between NAM and the GOP.

Which made it that much more extraordinary yesterday when the National Association of Manufacturers urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump and "preserve democracy."

Around the same time, former Defense Secretary William Cohen -- who served in Congress as a Maine Republican for many years -- also told CNBC that the cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

As several dozen members of Congress push the same line -- including, as of this afternoon, one House Republican -- this isn't just idle chatter. CNN reported overnight:

Some Cabinet members are holding preliminary discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment to force President Trump's removal from office, a GOP source said. The discussions are ongoing but it's unclear if there will be enough Cabinet members to result in Trump's removal. The conversations have reached the Hill where some senators have been made aware of the discussions, the source said.

CBS News ran a similar report.

If my email inbox is any indication, there's considerable reader interest in the topic, so let's take a minute to review the basics.

Almost immediately after Trump's 2016 inauguration, chaos gripped the White House. Vanity Fair published a piece noting, "[S]ome West Wing advisers were worried that Trump's behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office."

The article added that Steve Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment to Trump, and the president replied, "What's that?"

Broadly speaking, the amendment is about presidential succession, and it includes language about what happens to the power of the office when a president is incapacitated. But Article 4 to the 25th Amendment also creates a constitutional mechanism in the event the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

Specifically, under the 25th Amendment, a sitting vice president and a majority of the cabinet could, on their own, agree to transfer power out of the hands of a sitting president. At that point, those officials would notify Congress, and the vice president would assume the office as the acting president.

And what if the challenged president wasn't on board with the plan to remove him/her from the office? As Vox explained, "If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn't reached, the president would regain his powers."

Given the circumstances, this creates a hurdle that would be tough to clear. That said, removing Trump from power, even temporarily, would offer a degree of security that doesn't currently exist.

It's worth emphasizing that the intended purpose of the constitutional provision was to address a president with a serious ailment -- say, a stroke, for example -- in which he or she is alive, but unable to fulfill the duties of the office.

It probably wasn't written to deal with a president who's succumbed to madness.

But maybe the intentions of the 25th Amendment's authors aren't paramount? Maybe what matters are the real-world conditions we find ourselves in?

Postscript: Just as an aside, The Atlantic's David Frum wrote the week after the 2016 election, "Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Article 4. We're all going to be talking a lot more about it in the months ahead."

Frum was clearly onto something.

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The 25th Amendment option is a tough hurdle to clear - MSNBC

Vice President Mike Pence has reportedly said that he does not want to attempt to use the Constitutions Twenty-fifth Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office. Yet even as the House is in the fast-moving preliminary stages of considering a second Trump impeachment, many politicians and commentators continue to make the case for using the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Impeachment is by far the preferable route for removing a president. The Twenty-fifth Amendment is meant to deal with medical issues that prevent a president from performing his duties. The impeachment process is the correct procedure for the situation in which we find ourselveswith a president whose actions, rather than his conditions, merit his removal from office; when the central questions are political or ethical rather than medical. Impeachment is how the Framers intended Congress punish a presidents crimes, malfeasance, or immorality. The fact that little more than a week remains in Trumps term is no excuse. Congress should perform its duty, not look to the executive branch for a shortcut.

Ratified in 1967, the Twenty-fifth Amendment was designed to address several problems with the offices of president and vice president, including how new vice presidents can be appointed in the event of a vacancy and how the president can temporarily delegate his powers to the vice president.

The amendments fourth section is the one under consideration now. It allows for the vice president and cabinet to start a process to transfer power to the vice president without the presidents consent or even against his will. But it has never been used and it does not fit todays situation with Trump.

The amendments authors sought a way to deal with the nightmare of a president whose health was so impaired that he could not carry out his duties. It has happened with several presidents in our nations history.

In 1881, James Garfield was shot by an assassin and lingered for months, in agonizing pain, as he slowly succumbed to infection.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke, and his wife, doctor, and close aids hid the severity of his condition not only from the public and Congress, but even from his cabinet. A century later, it remains unclear exactly what Woodrow Wilson approved during this period and what was carried out by Edith Wilson acting on her husbands behalf.

In 1955, Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and a year later underwent surgery for a bowel obstruction. He had signed an agreement with Vice President Richard Nixon to govern in his absence, but the deal was constitutionally dubious.

The Twenty-fifth Amendments text does not specify that it may be used only for a medical emergency. Section four requires a written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. But a medical emergency is clearly what the amendment is meant for.

In our current crisis, it is unwise to push the envelope of constitutional interpretation, which would inject even more uncertainty into how the Constitutions rules are applied. Invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment now to force Trump from office will set a precedent: It will change the relationship among the president, vice president, cabinet, and Congress.

Whats more, invoking the Twenty-fifth now doesnt solve the problem of the clock running out before inauguration day. Section four says that the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President after sending to Congress a declaration signed by both himself and a majority of the cabinet. But the president can immediately object by sending a letter of his own; the powers of the office would then return to him. The vice president and cabinet would then have to send another letter, and then Congress shall decide the issue via a process left unspecified. So using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to remove an unwilling president, even assuming a majority of the cabinet would go along with it, would likely involve the bouncing back and forth of presidential power, followed by congressional debate that could go on for up to three weeks.

The amendment also provides for the removal of the president following the recommendation of such other body as Congress may by law providepresumably a special commission to determine presidential fitnessbut if Congress is willing to involve itself to that degree, it ought instead to pursue the more appropriate path of impeachment.

Relatedly, if the Twenty-fifth were deployed, Vice President Pence would become only acting president while Trump remained president but without powersanother novelty sure to cause confusion and foster more instability. Weve previously only had a vice president as acting president for a few hours while presidents underwent surgery. What chaos would a week of an acting president bring if power was wrested against the presidents will?

If the only option for removing the president were pursuing the Twenty-fifth Amendment, the potential chaos and confusion involved would probably make it preferable to just wait out the remaining days of the expiring Trump administration.

Fortunately, the Twenty-fifth Amendment is not the only option. If Congress is inclined to force Trump from office, it should seek impeachment and conviction, the process most clearly envisioned by the Constitution for this situation. Yes, impeachment is usually a drawn-out procedureforty-nine days elapsed from the approval of impeachment articles by the House of Representatives to President Trumps acquittal by the Senatebut Congress can move more quickly if it has the will. Trumps allies in Congress might interfere, but they would have a voice in a Twenty-fifth Amendment procedure anyway.

Congress must accept its responsibility and act with urgency, not pass the buck to the vice president and the cabinet.

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Use Impeachment, Not the 25th Amendment, to Remove Trump - The Bulwark