Evidence says US president-elect Donald Trump could be impeached: Law professor

The US has elected a leader, and a lot of people are not happy. Donald Trump will be the 45^th president of the United States of America, but that could be prevented from happening. According to a law professor, there is already enough evidence to impeach him.

Christopher Lewis Peterson, University of Utah Law professor, wrote in September why Trump should be impeached if he was elected as US president. He said the former “The Apprentice” reality TV star has engaged in crimes that are under the Article II of the United States Constitution, which meant he could be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanours.”

Peterson cited the three lawsuits that Trump currently facing – fraud, false advertising and racketeering – from the series of wealth seminars the Trump University collected US$40 million (AU$54 million) from consumers from. And should Trump be elected as US president – which he had been on Tuesday – he could get impeached.

“Congress would be well within its legal rights under the Constitution to insist upon a President who is not a fraudster or a racketeer as defined in its own laws,” the law professor wrote.

Once Trump has taken office in January, he will be immune from lawsuits arising during his time as president, but this immunity does not extend to acts that took place prior.

“The campaign of a major presidential candidate with pending trials for fraud and racketeering is structurally corrosive to our system of government because it pits two of the Republic’s most treasured values against each other. On the one hand Americans have always believed in the electoral process. And yet, on the other hand Americans have also always held to the view that no one is above the law. A Trump presidency may force Congress to choose between the two,” he concluded.

Impeachment may be possible but unlikely. No US president has ever been impeached yet. For a US president to be impeached, the proceedings should be launched in the House of Representative, while the Senate has the power to try the case. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both found guilty of wrongdoing by the House of Representatives but were cleared by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before he could face impeachment in 1974.

As the Independent notes, both the House of Representatives and the Senate are controlled by the Republicans, which is Trump’s political party. And therefore, although Trump was infamously rejected by some of the party’s famous faces, it is doubtful that they would actually vote to impeach the real estate mogul.

Nevertheless, many people who were disappointment and dismayed by the election results have been searching for ways on how to prevent Trump from taking over incumbent President Barack Obama’s position.

There was one past prediction, though, that claimed Obama would be the last US president. The late Baba Vanga, called the Nostradamus from the Balkans, made a vague prediction that some people interpreted as Trump never taking office.

Read: Nostradamus from the Balkans, Baba Vanga, predicted that Barack Obama would be the last US president

Trump won the election from Democrat Hillary Clinton, who lost by electoral vote (228-290) but won popular vote (47.7 percent to Trump’s 47.5 percent). He will take office as the 45^th US president on Jan. 20, 2017.