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In any case, the Senate always decides on disqualification after the offender is a private citizen, since that is what he becomes upon conviction of an impeachable offense. The Constitution does not even specify that this second vote on disqualfication must be immediate. The Senate could vote weeks later, after deliberation and debate, well into the former presidents private life.

Still more fundamental: This late impeachment argument fails to grasp the constitutional framework within which the question must be considered. The Federalist Papers made plain the framers preoccupation with protections against the demagogue, the unworthy candidate of perverted ambition who practices with success the vicious arts, by which elections are too often carried. The provision for disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit was one of many instances of constitutional checks against popular passions that could lead to the election of officeholders who would threaten to subvert the Republic.

No basis exists for claiming that the drafters of the Constitution intended to leave presidents who have demonstrated danger to the Republic to seek the position again based on a mere happenstance of timing: that a Senate trial cannot take place after the president has been voted out of office.

Mr. Trump is being tried for conduct that the Constitution expressly singles out as a basis for disqualifying someone from office. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies from federal or state office anyone who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or given aid and comfort to them. Mr. Trump has been impeached for taking such actions for the express purpose of promoting opposition to the transfer of power to his duly elected successor.

The House voted this impeachment with urgency, intending to have the Senate try, convict and remove Mr. Trump to disable any further maneuvers by him to retain office. This has hardly been a generalized political witch hunt against vague offenses.

Moreover, Congress holds a similar power in its ability to police its own ranks. Under Article 1, Section 5 both the House and Senate may expel a member by a vote of two-thirds. Neither has regularly exercised this power, but of the 15 Senate expulsions, 14 involved members who had supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. The House also expelled three members for support of the secession.

Enough Republican senators may adopt this argument against late impeachment to block conviction and the ensuing vote on disqualification. But the moment should not pass without calling out in clear terms the damaging constitutional precedent that this outcome will produce.

The Republican senators are effectively seeking to establish a loophole in the critical constitutional mechanism for holding presidents accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors in this case, a trial and decision on disqualification of a former president who, while in office and as set forth in the article of impeachment, gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government, threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government.

Bob Bauer, a former senior adviser for the Biden campaign, is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law and an author, with Jack Goldsmith, of After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency.

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Opinion | The Republican Argument Against Trying Trump Is Dangerous - The New York Times