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what are the mechanics of impeachment in the first place and where is this going to lead us to help answer these questions i'm joined by senior legal fellow heritage foundation's hans spakovsky hans good to see you as always well thanks for having me all right hans talk to me about this they were this has happened i think once before there was a secretary of defense who was impeached after resigning i think it was so there's some precedent for that but never a president what is the process here before we get in the constitutionality of this legal arguments against it what are the democrats hoping to achieve i mean at the end of this do they vote specifically on on what well if you look at the uh constitution there's provisions in article one article two regarding impeachment and clearly the impeachment provision was put in the in there to remove a current federal uh officer or civil officer of the united states and what it says is that upon conviction that judgment which means conviction means removal from office but that conviction can also include barring you from ever holding a federal officer again and and clearly they can't remove him from office because he's already out he's a private citizen so they clearly want to ensure that he doesn't run for president again in four years that's obviously their political motive for doing that and so if if he is convicted is there some kind of you know usually in a criminal trial for example if you have a conviction then you go to the sentencing phase how would that work here i mean would i if i mean it's unlikely we all know because the senate held a already held a vote thanks to senator rand paul and i think 45 republicans said that they viewed this whole thing as unconstitutional so i don't think they're going to say it's unconstitutional and then a whole bunch of them all of a sudden go along and say you know what we're actually believing that this was uh that this was legitimate but but just putting putting that aside for a moment um if he's convicted is it automatic that he's barred from office or does that get worked in does okay so that's something i want to know about yeah no that has to be worked in and to give you good examples of that um uh some years ago uh uh the the uh congress impeached a federal judge in florida he decided to then run for congress and he's been in congress ever since and that's because when congress convicted when senate convicted of impeachment to remove him as a federal judge they did not bar him from holding future office so in that case go ahead go ahead that's that's congressman hastings of florida very interesting backstory there so there is that possibility you're not expecting that this will actually go through but before i i'm assuming but i want to ask you that but also what do you make of the the argument that many republicans the senate are making that this is just flatly unconstitutional on its face oh i i totally agree with them again if you look at the constitution the whole purpose of the impeachment clause was to remove a sitting federal official you cannot impeach a private citizen yeah they point to this precedent uh in 1875 sorry 1876 of william belknap the former secretary of war but even at that time it was extremely controversial the idea of impeaching him when he was no longer in office and it's never happened since 150 years almost and this has never been done and that's because it clearly is unconstitutional to do that how is the president's defense when he's not the president i mean how does the uh you know ahaz it's always hard to talk about how does the ex-president provide a defense of himself as president in the senate under the procedures as they're playing out right now well he's already hired a lawyer actually someone i know out of south carolina a guy named butch bowers who's organizing the defense team and they will appear in the senate to argue the case but here's what people need to understand this is not like a criminal trial you know this is not a situation where the usual rules apply that would apply to court of law the rules are whatever the senate says they are so for example if the president wants to present witnesses on his behalf he won't be able to do that unless the senate agrees that he can provide witnesses so what we may end up having is simply the lawyers on each side presenting their arguments and then you may get written questions from the senators but there may not be any outside witnesses hans before we let you go just leaning again on your legal expertise here there was a setback for the bidet administration with these big executive orders right off the bat uh in texas having to do with enforcement of immigration law tell us about what happened here and how all this went down well in essence the uh binding administration said that they were going to halt all deportations of aliens or here illegally for a hundred days and the court basically said uh you can't do that you know you can't simply say you're not going to enforce federal law on a wholesale basis like that so that's been temporarily halted while the case goes on and also you you might have seen today uh in in politico they have a story about the uh forming the body administration forming a supreme court review committee what is this all about well obviously this is his gift to the left which as you know has been talking about the fact that congress needs to pack the court in other words expand the number of justices from nine uh so that they can put liberals on the court to out vote the conservatives on the court and obviously they're going to want this commission to come up with a recommendation saying oh yeah that's that's the right policy we we need to do that i mean why else they form a commission like that it just seems so absurd i mean is there really any chance hans that they're not going to say that they should pack the court after this commission comes together i mean why even go through the exercise of this i mean i've got to assume that even within the legal profession i know there are a lot of liberals running around with law degrees they got to recognize i mean this is like a stunt yeah no this is just to give them political cover for what they want to do which is like i said pack the court so they can out vote the conservatives and basically get whatever they want no matter what the constitution said han spakovsky that heritage hans always good to have you sir thanks for watching the heritage foundation's youtube channel with more than half a million members we are the nation's largest conservative research and education institution we believe the principles and ideas of the american founding are worth conserving and renewing please help us further our mission by subscribing to this channel and sharing our videos with your family and friends