Former President Trump (probably) won't be disqualified from running again

A Senate vote on Tuesday indicates that the House impeachment managers have an uphill climb to secure a conviction.

Unless you have been living on Mars or quarantining from COVID-19 in a place with no Wi Fi or cable service, you know that the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach President Trump on January 13, 2021 - a week before his term in office ended.  The prescribed procedure is: the House impeaches (indicts), while the Senate tries and either convicts or exonerates.  The House trial managers formally delivered the article of impeachment to the Senate a couple of days ago, on, January 25, and the Senate has announced that the trial will commence on February 8.

Amid this parade of key milestone dates, another is worth mentioning: Trump's presidency ended on January 20, before he could be tried in the Senate, and indeed before the House had even sent the article of impeachment to the Senate.  The three previous Senate trials of an impeached president (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Trump the first time) all took place while the president was still in office.  So this will be the first time that a former president has been tried in an impeachment proceeding.  

I had not previously understood that a former official could be impeached; my laypersons' understanding of an impeachment conviction was that its purpose is to remove a sitting official from office.  According to the Constitution of the United States (Article 1, Section 3), that is indeed one of its purposes - but there is a second purpose as well: "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States ..."  So the operative theory of trying former President Trump after he has left office seems to be: he can't be removed from office (as, despite his strenuous, dodgy and ultimately violent efforts, he is no longer president); but if convicted by the Senate, he still can be disqualified from holding future office, including the office of President of the United States, to which, at present, he is qualified to be elected (again) as soon as 2024.

But noting that an impeachment conviction can disqualify the convicted subject from holding office in the future does not answer the question: may a former (as opposed to a sitting) official be impeached?   Not being an attorney, I'm not qualified to give an authoritative opinion.  Learned opinions can be found on both sides of the question.  It seems that, throughout our nation's history, there is only one precedent - but a precedent, even if there is only one, seems significant - of an official no longer in office being tried in the Senate.   Here is Washington Examiner columnist Byron York's summary of that case (my source for this is a daily enewsletter from York, sent on January 25, 2021):

... Secretary of War William Belknap, who in 1876 was accused of financial corruption. Minutes before the House was scheduled to vote to impeach him, Belknap resigned, claiming that Congress could not impeach a former official. The House went ahead and impeached him anyway, and the Senate then debated whether Belknap, as a former official, could be tried in a court of impeachment. They eventually voted 37 to 29 that Belknap could, in fact, be tried. (There were 76 seats, one of which was vacant, in the Senate at that time.) Then, after a five-month trial, they failed to convict Belknap on a vote of 37 to 25. The reason Belknap was acquitted -- he was clearly guilty of the financial crimes at the heart of the case -- was that a sufficient number of senators believed it was unconstitutional to try a former official to prevent the impeachers from reaching the Constitution's two-thirds standard for conviction.

York is among those who believe that a former president can't be impeached.  But here is Princeton law professor Keith E Whittington (from an enewsletter, dated January 22, 2021, kindly forwarded to me by a friend):

For the Founders, it would have been obvious that the “power to impeach” included the ability to hold former officials to account. The impeachment power was imported to America from England, where Parliament impeached only two men during the 18th century, both former officers. No U.S. state constitution limited impeachments to sitting officers, and some allowed impeachment only of former officers. In 1781 the Virginia General Assembly subjected Thomas Jefferson to an impeachment inquiry after he completed his term as governor.

 Why would former officers be included within the impeachment power? Impeachment trials had long served as a vehicle for exposing and formally condemning official wrongdoing, or for a former officeholder to clear his name. Disqualification from future office was also an important penalty. A former Vermont lawmaker was impeached and disqualified from future state office for leading one of the tax rebellions that spurred the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. The American founders understood the history of demagogues and dictators corrupting republics and the need to exclude them from future office. As one delegate to a state ratifying convention put it, men who held public office should be “within the reach of responsibility” so that “they cannot forget that their political existence depends upon their good behavior.

Whittington argues here from original understanding and intent, a method of Constitutional interpretation which usually carries great weight with conservatives.  

But, as noted above, there are some legal scholars who don't believe that a former president can be impeached.  And Senate Republicans are grabbing this position as a lifeline to let Trump off the hook again.  From The Hill from January 27:

The Senate sent a strong signal Tuesday that there are not nearly enough votes to convict President Trump in an impeachment trial when only five GOP senators rejected an effort by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to declare the looming trial unconstitutional. 

The Senate voted 55-45 to set aside Paul's motion, with all but five GOP senators siding with Paul. GOP Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Pat Toomey (Pa.) voted with Democrats to table Paul's point of order ...

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said in a statement Monday night that while Trump "exhibited poor leadership and holds some responsibility" for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, that her "concern right now is that the president is no longer in office."

"Congress would be opening itself to a dangerous standard of using impeachment as a tool for political revenge against a private citizen, and the only remedy at this point is to strip the convicted of their ability to run for future office — a move that would undoubtedly strip millions of voters of their ability to choose a candidate in the next election," she added.

Fwiw, my take on this is two-fold:

• This is a pretty clear indication that Democrats will not be able to round up 17 Republican senators to vote to convict the president
• The January 27 Senate vote illustrates that Republican officeholders are not close to resolving their fundamental problem: they are reliant on Trump's base to win elections, and so fear to cross him