McGeorge’s Associate Dean Mary-Beth Moylan and Anthony M. Kennedy Professor of Law Leslie Gielow Jacobs were called on multiple times yesterday and today to help explain the events that took place on January 6 at the U.S Capitol and the ramifications of those events.

In an interview with Fox 40’s Eric Rucker, Dean Moylan characterized the attack on the Capitol as “a really great illustration of what happens in a lawless society.”

While the events that took place yesterday were “mind blowing” as Dean Moylan correctly predicted, the impact that the events will have on the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election was minimal. “If anything, this act of breaching the Capitol has slowed things down, but it won’t stop the inevitability of these certified votes being counted, and it won’t stop the inevitability that on January 20 at noon, the 12^th Amendment says that the term of the current president is over. That will happen no matter what,” she told KCRA’s Brian Heap.

In that same story, Anthony M. Kennedy Professor of Law Leslie Gielow Jacobs was asked about the events. She explained that the right to free speech is “a cherished right that we have in the United States … and that includes the right to assemble and the right to protest and to criticize the government. But we’re not allowed to trespass on government property, we’re not allowed to take over a street if we haven’t received a permit to do so, [and] you couldn’t storm the Capitol for any reason.”

In a separate interview with Fox 40’s Martina Del Bonta, Dean Moylan answered questions about a proposal to draft new articles of impeachment and calls for the Vice President and the Cabinet to invoke the 25^th Amendment. Dean Moylan said that if impeached and convicted, President Trump would be banned from running for federal office in the future, and she noted that he could still be impeached even after leaving office if the process took longer than the two weeks remaining on the current president’s term.

When asked if the events that unfolded on January 6 warranted invoking the 25^th Amendment, Dean Moylan said, “It’s enough if the Vice President and the requisite amount of the Cabinet, two-thirds, say that it’s enough. The problem is that we’ve never seen the 25^th Amendment used in this way.