Harvard constitutional regulation scholar Laurence Tribe issued a stark warning Monday, cautioning why he believes that dismissing the potential of a 3rd time period for President Donald Trump is a mistake.
“Anybody discounting a 3d Trump time period per the 22d am + the twelfth am is pondering magically,” Tribe wrote on X (previously Twitter), referencing the twenty second and twelfth Amendments to the U.S. Structure.
The 22nd Amendment states that “no individual shall be elected to the workplace of the President greater than twice.” It additionally restricts somebody from being elected once more in the event that they’ve already served greater than two years of one other president’s time period.
Nonetheless, Tribe identified the modification solely prohibits being elected to a 3rd time period and doesn’t explicitly ban serving one.
The 12th Amendment, in the meantime, says that “no individual constitutionally ineligible to the workplace of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the USA.”
Tribe famous this could solely bar somebody from operating for vice chairman in the event that they had been ineligible to run for president.
“Trump isn’t ineligible,” famous Tribe, who this weekend signed on to a letter to college students at Harvard Regulation Faculty, the place he’s a professor, which warned that the “rule of regulation” is below critical menace amid Trump’s second time period.
“QED!” he added, utilizing the Latin abbreviation for “quod erat demonstrandum,” indicating his level was confirmed.
Different regulation consultants, nonetheless, disagree.
Northeastern College constitutional regulation professor Jeremy Paul stated “there are no credible legal arguments for him [Trump] to run for a 3rd time period.”
And Notre Dame professor Derek Muller argued there isn’t “any ‘one bizarre trick’ to getting round presidential time period limits” and advised that Trump’s rhetoric is, as a “lame-duck president,” simply supposed to “present as a lot energy as potential.”
Trump, for his half, has repeatedly teased the thought of a 3rd time period.
In an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president instructed anchor Kristen Welker that he was “not joking” concerning the thought and advised “there are strategies which you might do it.”
One such manner, Trump acknowledged, might contain a state of affairs the place Vice President JD Vance tops the ticket, wins the election, after which transfers energy to Trump.
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“However there are others too,” Trump stated, although he declined to elaborate.