LEGAL JEOPARDY: Trump promotes another new FALSE LEGAL THEORY to explain why he can’t be indicted
Ex-President Donald Trump added a new tune to his same old song of being wrongfully persecuted for his multitude of crimes, telling a crowd at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday that the Department of Justice’s investigation into his failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election constitutes double jeopardy.
“They tried it in the Senate, they went through the whole process. And we won, we won through the process,” Trump whined. ” We went through two of them,” presumably conflating his two impeachments with a DOJ criminal prosecution.
It should be noted there is a parallel probe into whether the former President’s removal and storage of sensitive government records when the disgraced insurrectionist left the White House in January 2021 violated the Presidential Records and Espionage Acts.
The perpetual victim piggybacked off the misleading claims made by right-wing Fox News pundit Geraldo Rivera, who claims that because Trump had “already been impeached for exactly these charges concerning the insurrection of January 6th,” the appointment of a special counsel in the DOJ’s probe, I submit is double jeopardy.”
In a 2000 memorandum, the Justice Department concluded that “the Constitution permits a former President to be criminally prosecuted for the same offenses for which he was impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate while in office.”
The DOJ stated that under the Impeachment Judgment Clause:
“The very clause in the Constitution, of itself, shows that it was intended the persons impeached and removed from office might still be indicted and punished for the same offense, else the provision would have been not only nugatory but a reflection on the enlightened body who framed the Constitution; since no person ever could have dreamed that a conviction on impeachment and a removal from office, in consequence, for one offense, could prevent the same person from being indicted and punished for another and different offense.”
Continuing to grasp at nonexistent straws, it appears the ex-President is looking for a lifeline in his desperate attempts to avoid prison.
While double jeopardy doesn’t apply in the Justice Department’s probe and its appointment of a special counsel to further delve into the allegations of potential sedition and treason – accountability and responsibility for selling out the country’s highest office — and the country — for the failed businessman’s own benefit certainly does.
Original reporting by Zachary Petrizzo at The Daily Beast.
Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick
