SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KTXL) – Local law experts say Congress has more hurdles to clear in order to make President Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment stick.
“I think it’s interesting that there were Republicans going along with it,” McGeorge School of Law professor Leslie Jacobs told FOX40 Wednesday.
Now that the House has voted to impeach Trump once more, Jacobs talked through next steps.
“The Senate tries the impeachment, and so the senators sit as jurors and they listen to arguments by the House,” she explained.
In order to convict the president of “incitement of insurrection,” Jacobs said the Senate needs at least a two-thirds majority vote. But a conviction doesn’t mean Trump would not be allowed to campaign for the presidency in 2024.
Jacobs said another vote after the conviction would need happen to stop Trump.
“If a conviction does happen then by, once again, a simple majority vote, the Senate could disqualify the president from running from office again,” she said.
Jacobs added that there is another way to disallow Trump from trying to get presidential power back in the future — by circling back to the charge of insurrection.
“Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 that says that officeholders who engage in insurrection while they are in office may not hold office again,” she explained.
But first, Jacobs said Congress would need to pass a statute go that route.
Jacobs said she believes if Trump is convicted by the Senate, he would almost certainly appeal that decision, forcing the issue to the courts.