TOPLINE
Steven Calabresi, cofounder of the conservative Federalist Society, called for a second impeachment inquiry into President Trump in a New York Times opinion piece on Thursday after a tweet earlier in the day from Trump where he falsely characterized mail-in voting and proposed the delay of the 2020 presidential election in November, which the executive branch cannot enact.
WASHINGTON, DC – JULY 29: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as White House Chief of Staff Mark … [+] Meadows (C) listens prior to Trump’s Marine One departure from the South Lawn of the White House July 29, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Trump is traveling to visit the Double Eagle Energy oil rig in Midland, Texas, and will attend a fundraising luncheon for the Republican Party and his reelection campaign. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Getty Images
KEY FACTS
“Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist,” Calabresi said. “But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.”
Founded in 1982, the Federalist Society is a right-wing organization with 60,000 lawyers, law students and scholars that’s been characterized as a “conservative pipeline to the Supreme Court” by the Atlantic, with the most recently confirmed judge Brett Kavanaugh joining the group while at Yale.
In his op-ed, Calabresi notes that he’s voted Republican in the presidential election since 1980, opposed the investigation into Russian election interference by Robert Mueller and also was against the impeachment into Trump regarding withholding aid to the Ukraine.
“But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election,” Calabresi writes, adding that doing so would be “illegal, unconstitutional and without precedent in American history.”
Calabresi joins a chorus of both Democratic and Republican voices denouncing Trump’s comments, with Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying, “We’ll cope with whatever the situation is and have the election on Nov. 3 as already scheduled.”
Trump sent his tweet the same day it was announced that the U.S. gross domestic product dropped at an annual rate of nearly 33% and amid more and more polls putting presumptive Democratic candidate for president Joe Biden far ahead of Trump in the November election.
Crucial Quote
“Election Day was fixed by a federal law passed in 1845, and the Constitution itself in the 20th Amendment specifies that the newly elected Congress meet at noon on Jan. 3, 2021, and that the terms of the president and vice president end at noon on Jan. 20, 2021,” Calabresi said. “If no newly elected president is available, the Speaker of the House of Representatives becomes acting president.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the current Speaker.)
Tangent
While mail-in voting has risen substantially in primary elections held amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the practice dates back to the Civil War and has increasingly been adopted over the years, including for Trump’s 2016 election win. While Trump purports widespread fraud through mail-in ballots, he has never shown evidence, and in fact, the Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 set the risk of fraud between 0.00004% to 0.0009%. Additionally, his repeated notion that mail-in voting hurts the chances for Republicans in elections, studies show that the practice doesn’t help either party.
Key Background
Calabresi joins other conservatives in their vocal dismissal of Trump. The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, earned the ire of Trump in May when he called it “a disgrace to Honest Abe.”
