The Founders didn't prepare for a president who refuses to step down, historians say [View all]
President Trump continued Friday to deny the results of the election, pressuring state officials in Michigan and Georgia to overturn the will of voters, and increasing fears that he might refuse to cede power to President-elect Joe Biden.
But those looking to the nation’s Founders, or the Constitution they framed, for answers to such a crisis will come up empty-handed. There is nothing in the Constitution about what to do if a president refuses to step down when his term expires, according to three historians and a constitutional law professor.
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“No, the framers did not envisage a president refusing to step down or discuss what should be done in such a situation,” Princeton historian Sean Wilentz said. “There’s obviously nothing in the Constitution about it.”
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Some losing presidential candidates have had better claims than Trump to seek legal remedies, Engel said, such as Andrew Jackson in 1824, Richard Nixon in 1960 and Al Gore in 2000, “but none of those people ever gave any hint that they were not going to respect the legitimate authority of whoever ended up winning the process.”
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The Biden campaign has said that should Trump refuse to leave on Jan. 20, “the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.” But that’s simply “common sense,” Wilentz said, not a documented process described in the Constitution or any other law.
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