Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.
If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he was not impeached.
Well, that's what lawyers do -- concoct arguments.
This is the sort of vaguely plausible but convoluted logic that law professors can't resist. Really this should be prefaced, "it can be argued that ..." And if Prof Feldman wants to contemplate what the Constitution contemplates, he should look at the Constitutional Congress history and the drafting of the impeachment section.
Of course the Constitution doesn't say what he claims it mean/implies. What's odd is Feldman adds a third requirement. Not only doe Feldman say that the House has to 1) vote on impeachment articles, but also 2) transmit the results to the Senate. Then he adds 3) the Senate has to hold a trial. Hmm. So if McConnell just refuses to hold a Senate trial over impeachment, then Trump was never impeached, according to Feldman?
And for whatever reason Feldman slips in another minor requirement: that the House 4) send managers to prosecute the impeachment case. Feldman seems to believe that all 4 steps are necessary to constitute impeachment, but he doesn't explicitly say so, as it gets easier to poke holes in his made-up requirements the more he has and the weaker these seem.
How about if the Senate holds a trial, but the House doesn't send managers maybe because it believes the Senate trial is a partisan sham with a pre-determined outcome? In both cases, according to Feldman, Trump was never impeached, despite having been, uh, impeached by the House vote? All seems rather counterintuitive, and created out of whole cloth.
It seems much simpler to believe impeachment occurs when the House votes for impeachment, since the House has the sole power of impeachment. And the Senate has the trial which functions as deciding upon the penalty if any, especially removal from office. That is, it sure looks like the House is in charge of impeaching and the Senate provides a check by determining if it is warranted and how to proceed.
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