The Full Extent of the Law

The editors of the Washington Post call for the Senate to convict Trump of the offense for which the House has impeached him:

THE SENATE will begin considering Tuesday whether to convict Donald Trump following the House’s unprecedented second impeachment of the former president. Mr. Trump’s lawyers, as well as many Republicans, deny that the proceedings are legitimate. They are wrong. The Senate must hold its trial, and the right vote is for conviction.

concluding:

Senators must not hide behind fig-leaf arguments. They should listen to the nearly 400 congressional staffers who wrote them a letter about the trauma they endured on Jan. 6, begging them to convict Mr. Trump. And they should think about the precedent they set. As the House managers put it, “Failure to convict would embolden future leaders to attempt to retain power by any and all means — and would suggest that there is no line a President cannot cross.”

I have expressed myself on this subject multiple times before. I think that President Trump’s statements immediately preceding the breaching of the Capitol on January 6 constituted an impeachable offense because context matters. When you yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater it matters whether there actually is a fire.

I am also sympathetic to the claim that there should be consequences for such recklessness but equally sympathetic with the observation that the Framers and, indeed, subsequent Congresses never envisioned a president who would speak in that way under the circumstances that obtained. Present law and precedent does not support the argument that the Senate has no alternative but to convict and under our system when the law and precedent do not apply, they don’t apply.

Congress should act expeditiously to remedy the present omission in the law and not merely assume that the law applies.