Andy McCarthy, a conservative pundit who served as a national security adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, is urging Congress to preemptively impeach Hillary Clinton in order to prevent her from becoming president.
McCarthy wrote in the National Review on Tuesday that Congress could launch proceedings for “an impeachment [of Clinton] based on her abuses of power as secretary of state, which would have the constitutional effect of disqualifying her for the presidency”:
For months, I have been arguing that Hillary Clinton should be impeached. It is all well and good to prosecute a former government official for any crimes she has committed. Indeed, the Constitution expressly provides for criminal prosecution in addition to impeachment. Nevertheless, for the Framers — and, if we had common sense, for us — the imperative was to deprive a corrupt person of any further opportunity to abuse government power. Whether the official should also be convicted and sent to prison was not unimportant but, in the greater scheme of things, decidedly secondary.
Interestingly, the main pushback I received upon positing this argument was not that Mrs. Clinton is undeserving of impeachment…
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No, the main objection to impeachment is the claim that, because the former secretary of state does not currently hold public office, there is nothing from which to remove her. Hence, as a non-incumbent who merely seeks the nation’s highest office — after proving herself manifestly unfit in a subordinate office — she is said to be immune from impeachment. How could she be impeached from the presidency, the question is posed, if she is not president? How could she be removed from an office she does not hold based on offenses not committed while wielding presidential power?
These questions and the non-incumbency theory behind them fundamentally misconstrue the constitutional remedy of impeachment, which is not limited to removal from power but includes disqualification from future office. Moreover, their premise is wrong: The proceeding against Clinton would not be a presidential impeachment; it would be an impeachment based on her abuses of power as secretary of state, which would have the constitutional effect of disqualifying her for the presidency.
