This is way beyond impeachment now

| 9:09 am EST January 5, 2021
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Donald Trump’s leaked phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger represented felony election fraud on Trump’s part, among other things. It’s certainly impeachment worthy. Here’s the thing, though: impeachment is only for people who are still in office.

As we saw back in late 2019 and early 2020, impeachment is a very long, complicated, multi-step process. Trump is just fifteen days away from being gone from office (no, none of these silly last minute desperation antics are going to magically keep him in office beyond January 20th). Even if impeachment began today, it wouldn’t even get through the most preliminary of stages by the time Trump is out of office. So what would be the point?

Some would argue that impeachment, even if it’s not going to succeed, is necessary to send a message about the rule of law. And this is true. But impeachment is a compromise to begin with. It’s a way of keeping a corrupt President in check while he’s in office and can’t easily be prosecuted by the criminal justice system. Impeachment doesn’t do much; the most severe punishment possible is removal from office.

The thing is, we keep falling into the trap of forgetting that Donald Trump is about 400 hours away from being out of office. The proper response to his criminal phone call is the criminal justice system. This is a matter for the Department of Justice and the Georgia Attorney General. We hand out criminal penalties to civilians to who commit crimes. Trump can try to pardon himself on all the federal crimes he’s committed, but most legal observers don’t expect that to hold up in court.

The bottom line is that this is beyond impeachment now, because Donald Trump is beyond the presidency. He’s already just about a lock for felony charges and prison in New York State, where a grand jury is already targeting him for financial crimes. Now it’s a matter of how many other jurisdictions pile on with various other kinds of criminal charges. This isn’t about impeachment anymore, it’s about prison.