Pace J. Michael Luttig, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge, whose opinion is that Trump's ex-post removal from office and disqualification from future office are constitutionally prohibited, professor of law Stephen Vladeck argues that the 1876 Secretary of War William Belknap impeachment case "cemented two precedents: Congress can impeach and remove former officers, but the fact that the defendant is no longer in office is one factor that senators may take into account in deciding whether to vote to convict," after which they can also vote to disqualify.
For now, who knows? Our highest, ruling tribunal is as much a panel of prejudices as learned scholars of law. All the same, should they decide to go with precedent, in the 1993 case of (U.S. District Judge Walter) Nixon v. United States, "the Supreme Court," notes Vladeck, "held that it’s not for the courts to review the propriety of impeachments."
While Trump's conviction and subsequent disqualification are of righteous appeal, I do find myself questioning if I sincerely desire the latter. Assuming the unstable toddler isn't assigned to the parental care of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or some state facility for the criminally insane, the imagination soars: Trump, foreclosing on other, possibly electable Republican presidential candidates' dreams; Trump, preserving the Republican Party's degradation and decadence; Trump, fracturing congressional candidates into warring tribes and thus numerically unelectable factions; Trump, ensuring that Big Money avoids further largess; Trump, summoning the nation's subterranean morons to surface and expose themselves to arrest and incarceration.
Incontrovertible is that the seething, brooding, tantrum-throwing lump of a public Trump would bequeath us all these gifts through enduring eligibility for office. Conversely, and just as incontrovertible, is that he doesn't serve the option. Hence I'm divided in thought and emotion. So I'll hang my hopes instead on a definitive resolution from the dubious wisdom of the U.S. Senate and Supreme Court.