The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump’s legal team began the week of his second impeachment trial by pressing a threshold question: whether the Senate had the power to try a former president at all. The chamber was scheduled to open the trial on February 9, 2021, and the first order of business was expected to be a vote on whether the case could proceed. Trump’s lawyers said it could not, arguing that impeachment applies only to sitting officeholders and that the Senate therefore lacked jurisdiction.

That argument was not new, but it was now being tested in the setting that mattered most. After the House impeached Trump for a second time on January 13, 2021, the Senate organized a trial framework and set the opening for February 9. The legal question centered on whether the Constitution allows the Senate to conduct an impeachment trial after the official in question has left office. Trump’s team said the answer was no. Senate Democrats said the Constitution still allows trial and judgment, including the possibility of disqualification from future office.

The opening-day vote reflected that dispute. On February 9, the Senate voted 56-44 that it had jurisdiction to try Trump even though he was no longer president. That ruling cleared the way for the trial to continue to the merits of the House charge, which accused Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The jurisdiction fight served a practical purpose for Trump’s defense. It put the first hours of the trial on procedure rather than on the facts of the riot, the pressure campaign around the 2020 election, and Trump’s conduct as Congress met to certify the results. If the defense could not win outright, it could still force senators to spend time on constitutional structure before they reached the substance of the case.

The broader stakes were plain. The Senate was not deciding a hypothetical question about a future officeholder. It was deciding whether the constitutional impeachment process reaches conduct committed by a president who leaves office before trial begins. Trump’s lawyers staked out the narrower reading. Senate leaders rejected it. The chamber’s February 9 vote settled the opening dispute and moved the trial into its next phase.