Prominent lawyer Ken Starr Starr defended Trump at the first Trump impeachment trial last January 27.
Special counsel Ken Starr, a central figure in the impeachment trial of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, said on Monday, Feb. 1, that the Senate does not have the authority to target an outgoing president. Ken Starr (D-N.Y.) said Monday, Feb. 1, that the Senate does not have the authority to conduct an impeachment trial against a former president who has left office.
Starr made the remarks in an interview with Fox News on Monday. He said, “The upper house (Senate) cannot conduct a trial of a president who has left office.” He added that the text of the U.S. Constitution is absolutely clear that the verdict in an impeachment case is to “disqualify and possibly disqualify (the president),” and therefore, by that definition, a former official cannot be removed from office.
The Senate is scheduled to begin impeachment trials against former President Trump on Feb. 9. Last week, 45 Republican senators voted against the impeachment trial, citing its unconstitutional nature.
Under the constitutional requirement that impeachment requires the support of at least two-thirds, or 67 senators, if 45 senators have already voted against impeachment, there is little chance that Trump will be impeached and convicted.
According to the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is supposed to serve as the presiding officer of the Senate impeachment trial, but he declined to participate. As a result, Senate Democrats appointed anti-Trump Democratic Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to preside over the trial.
Starr also said the Senate has absolutely no jurisdiction to try Trump, and if they continue to do so, they will …… violate the Constitution’s deprivation of private rights act to punish the outgoing president (by impeachment).
Starr was a central figure in the impeachment of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and worked as an independent prosecutor investigating the Clinton scandal. Although he provided strong evidence at the Time and passed articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives, Clinton was acquitted because he failed to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate to support impeachment.
Not long ago, Alan Dershowitz, a prominent Harvard law professor, expressed a similar view to Starr’s, arguing that it was unconstitutional for the Senate to impeach Trump after he had left office.
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