As I wrote a post recently regarding whether Virginia governor Ralph Northam could be impeached for a racist photo that appeared on his medical school yearbook page decades earlier (I said no), I temporized regarding a more difficult hypothetical. Suppose that after an individual has assumed office, it comes to light that he committed a serious crime, such as murder or rape, years before taking office and completely unrelated to his political life? Note that this question has implications for whether a president can be indicted because, if a president can neither be indicted nor impeached for some serious criminal offenses preceding his time in office, it means that he would be effectively immune from accountability for the remainder of his term.
Thanks to Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax (good job, Virginia), this hypothetical has come to life. Fairfax is accused of two separate sexual assaults, both of which long preceded his time in office. Fairfax denies the allegations. A member of the Virginia House of Delegates has announced that if Fairfax does not resign, he will introduce an impeachment resolution as early as Monday. This raises the question whether the allegations against Fairfax are grounds for impeachment.
This is not an easy question. In his recent book, Professor Michael Gerhardt, one of the leading scholars on impeachment, discusses the hypothetical of a presidential candidate “who lied about committing a murder during the campaign but then later is discovered to have been responsible for that crime.” Michael J. Gerhardt, Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know 56 (Oxford U. Press 2018). Gerhardt notes the recent case of federal judge Thomas Porteous, who was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate in part based upon lying during the confirmation process about corrupt behavior as a state judge. (We also discussed the Porteous case here).
Continue reading “Can Virginia Lieutenant Governor Fairfax Be Impeached? It’s Complicated.”