Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump’s Impeachment Filing Contains a Bizarre Legal Argument

A “bill of attainder” has nothing to do with the former president’s Senate trial.

February 2, 2021 at 9:10 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Trump and his mob on Jan 6, 2021.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

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The impeachment defense brief of former president Donald Trump mostly consists of three elements, each of which I’ve addressed (and rejected) in previous columns: the purported unconstitutionality of trying the president once he is out of office; his supposed First Amendment rights; and his denial that he incited the attack on the Capitol.

But there is something new in the brief: the astonishing assertion that if the Senate tries Trump, it will have violated the constitutional rule against bills of attainder.