After Trump and Pence are Impeached, What Comes Next?

After the latest disclosure that Vice President Pence and his staff are knee deep in the Ukrainian scandal and with a full-scale impeachment inquiry under way in the House of Representatives, there is a real possibility that both the president and vice president could be impeached. It is a possibility I addressed in an op-ed published last May.

In my opinion piece on May 23rd entitled: “Trump, Pence are Illegitimate. Impeach Them.” I wrote after the Mueller Report was made public that the cooperation between the Trump-Pence Campaign and Russians may not have risen to the level of a criminal conspiracy, but there was plenty of collusion. I noted that sharing campaign polling and strategy documents with a Russian intelligence asset was, in fact, collusion. The ten counts of obstruction of justice listed in the Mueller Report were potential crimes. In addition, Russia’s interference in the election through use of our social media platforms was enough wrongdoing for me to call their elections illegitimate. Clearly there were grounds for removal from office through impeachment. Since the impeachable acts benefited the entire Trump and Pence Ticket, it made sense that if they were illegitimately elected together they should be impeached together.

Of course, at the time of my writing I had no idea that another impeachable offense would be in the offing two months later in the form of a telephone conversation between the president of Ukraine and president Trump in which Trump extorted the Ukrainian president to find dirt on Trump’s political opponent in exchange for congressionally approved military assistance to stave off Russian aggression. It is now reported that Pence also had similar conversations and a face-to-face meeting with the president of Ukraine to enforce Trump’s criminal act.

If both Trump and Pence are impeached and eventually convicted in the Senate, what’s next? As I wrote back in May:

“…the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 sets the order of officials who are in line to succeed a president, regardless of the reason. The first three officials listed are the vice president, the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate. If the vice president were unable to ascend to the presidency for whatever reason — for example resignation or impeachment — then the speaker would become president. Today that individual is Rep. Nancy Pelosi. It is unknown whether she would agree to serve as president or that the majority of the House would want her to do so.”

As we get closer to the possibility of having both of the highest officials in our government simultaneously impeached, the question will be asked of Speaker Pelosi: would she agree to fill out the remainder of Trump’s presidential term that ends at noon on January 20, 2021? If she were to answer “yes” that would end the discussion.

But what if the Speaker were to decline the presidency? To this possibility I offered the following scenario:

The Constitution does not require the speaker of the House actually to be a member of the House of Representatives. Under these circumstances, with the specter of a national crisis looming over the vacancy of the presidency and vice presidency simultaneously, consideration should be given by House members to draft a nationally-known individual for speaker who would appeal to the vast majority of Americans. That person, after being sworn in as speaker, would ascend to the highest office in the land. Under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, the new president would nominate a vice president, who would take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both chambers of Congress.

It appears we may be nearing the national crisis I speculated on four months ago. While the circumstances I envisioned have changed, the possibility of impeachment and conviction is now significantly greater. Americans of all political persuasions will have to face up to their serious responsibilities as citizens and voters. For their elected members of congress their decisions will be of historical proportions.

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Tom Coleman is a former Republican Member of Congress from Missouri and has served as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and at American University.

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