Conservative radio show host Mark Levin criticized Ted Cruz in a rare move over an op-ed where the senator argued that a former president “can be impeached and tried” as the Senate has the constitutional jurisdiction to do so.
“It’s one of the rare occasions where I strongly disagree with him,” Levin said at the beginning of his radio show Wednesday evening. “He said ‘the constitutional question of whether a former president can be impeached or tried after he has left office is a close legal question.’”
Levin questioned how it was a close legal question as “it’s never been done before to a president.”
In his op-ed, Cruz said, “Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution gives the House ‘the sole Power of impeachment,’ and Section 3 gives the Senate ‘the sole Power to try all impeachments.’”
“At the time the Constitution was adopted, there was meaningful debate over whether impeachment encompassed so-called ‘late impeachments,’ i.e. after the person had left office,” he continued. “The British common law, which informed the understanding of the Founders, suggests that the better answer is yes.”
Levin argued that the founding fathers “weren’t drones” who adopted “everything the British did.”
“We actually have a Constitution. They don’t have a Constitution, right? So they would embrace what they thought was smart from the British or what they thought was smart from, from the ancients. They read Aristotle and Cicero,” Levin said. “They told us exactly what they did. You don’t have to read tea leaves. And while it’s true they looked at British common law and impeachment, they didn’t adopt it, they adopted certain phrases and so forth.”
“So what Ted is doing here is he’s saying, ‘Well, of course, it’s a close question, but I come down on the side that the Senate can, in fact, hold a trial on a private citizen who was once a public official or president.’”
Levin also questioned where in James Madison’s writings it signals support for Cruz’s argument that a former president can be impeached.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if Ted’s right and I’m wrong, where is the specific language in Madison’s notes? The best information we have on what took place in the constitutional convention supporting Ted’s position, where is it? It’s nowhere. How about the commentary? By three, and especially two of the most prominent individuals, the delegates, Hamilton and Madison, and of course, Jay. There’s nothing in there that supports it, nothing, not a word. Not a word.”
Cruz has repeatedly ripped the second impeachment of Trump, where he is accused of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cruz added that the Senate won’t have the necessary votes to convict him.
“At the end of the day, it is not going to succeed. President Trump is going to be acquitted. In order to convict him, it takes 67 votes. There are not 67 votes. Every senator knows that, the House managers know that,” Cruz said this week.
