Declaring Inability: Donald Trump and the Limits of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment

After losing presidential election of 2020, Donald Trump actively attempted to overturn the will of the American people, seeking the ways to claim the second presidential term. Looking to stop the legislative branch of federal government from doing the inevitable, Trump hoped to deny the certification of the electoral victory of Joe Biden. The rhetoric led to a physical attack on the federal Capitol, causing five people dead and more than a hundred injured. A week later, Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for a second time. Before so, however, it was widely expected that the president might be a subject of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment invocation. Section 4 of the amendment states that „Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”. While vice president Mike Pence rejected the idea as he did „not believe that such a course of action was in the best interest of the Nation or consistent with Consitution” (Pence 2021), the question is whether the Capitol riot created a circumstances for historical application of Section 4. This paper seeks to address whether (1) the term „presidential inability” from Section 4 allows to remove the President from office in non-medical related conditions; (2) the events of January 6, 2021 qualified for the use of Section 4 provisions and what would serve as evidence of the inability; (3) the fact of not invoking Section 4, if that formally allowed, demostrated the limits of the Twenty-Fifth Amendments or rather inability of political actors to perform their constituional duty. The preliminary findings demonstrate that while declaring the President unable would be legal, it would bear a major political questions on those issuing such a declaration, both individually and collectively. While the evidence of Donald Trump inciting the mob would be hard to substantiate in court, a thourough analysis of his conduct during the very attack on the Capitol might provide evidence of inability, particularly in the court of public opinion. Finally, the research suggests that limits of both the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and contemporary American political class allowed Donald Trump not to be deprived of his presidential powers and duties before January 20, 2021.