Streips: 2021 impeachment conviction would have barred Trump from 2024 run
In a comment marking the anniversary of Nixon's resignation, journalist Kārlis Streips reviews the history of U.S. impeachment and notes that a conviction in Trump's 2021 impeachment would have disqualified him from the 2024 election. He also suggests a new impeachment push could follow if Democrats retake Congress this fall.
Latvijas Avīze columnist Kārlis Streips, writing on the 52nd anniversary of U.S. President Richard Nixon's resignation, revisits the Watergate scandal and the broader history of impeachment in the United States.
Streips recalls that Nixon resigned in 1974 after secret Oval Office recordings and a congressional investigation made clear he no longer had enough Senate support to avoid conviction.
Impeachment precedents
The author lists the historical cases in which the U.S. House approved impeachment resolutions against a sitting president — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump twice, in 2019 and 2021. In every case the Senate acquitted the president, as the required two-thirds majority for conviction was not reached.
In the 2021 impeachment, tied to the storming of the Capitol after Trump's 2020 election loss, 57 senators — including seven Republicans — voted to convict, still short of the threshold.
What conviction would have meant
Streips stresses that had the Senate convicted Trump at that time, U.S. law would have barred him from holding any federal office afterward — meaning he could not have run for president in 2024.
The author also notes that if the Democratic Party regains a congressional majority in this autumn's elections, the House could quickly move toward a new impeachment effort against Trump, though the outcome would again hinge on the Senate.
For comparison, Streips mentions Article 51 of Latvia's Constitution, which allows the Saeima to dismiss the President, though Latvia has no formal impeachment institution and this provision has never been used in practice.
