What Does Hunter Biden Have in Common with a Catholic Priest in 1865?

The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump will likely become a trial for Hunter Biden. The Constitution prohibits Congress from putting people on trial: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The framers knew about Acts of Parliament that condemned individuals—usually opponents of the Crown— and stripped them of property. Sometimes, a bill of attainder led to execution.

The point of the constitutional bar against attainders is that courts— not legislatures—have exclusive power to try, judge, and convict people.

So, where do Hunter Biden and a Catholic priest fit into this conversation?

Congress passed a law right after the Civil War ended requiring certain professional people—including clergy— to swear an oath, under pain of perjury, that they did not support the Confederacy.

Father Cummings refused to take this oath, even though he in no way supported the Confederacy.

He was then jailed because he (a) continued to work as a priest, and (b) refused to take the oath.

This Catholic priest seems to be a more sympathetic figure than Hunter Biden, though I would note that anti-Catholicism was a powerful prejudice throughout most of the 1800s (and well into the twentieth century).

How does Hunter Biden figure into this?

Hopefully, not at all. But if Sen. Lindsey Graham, as Chair of the Judiciary Committee, subpoenas Biden, his lawyer would likely counsel him to contest the subpoena.

That wouldn’t necessarily stop Sen. Graham and his GOP colleagues for voting to hold Biden in contempt of Congress.

In 1857, Congress enacted a law that made contempt of Congress a criminal offense against the United States. The last time Congress arrested and detained a witness was in 1935.

The point is that an impeachment trial has only one defendant: the president. And if the president loses, he is removed from office-- he does not go to jail. 
When impeachment trials are used to taint other people—and again, the judicial character of an impeachment trial matters here— it lapses into the type of highly vindictive use of royal power that Parliament wielded against opponents of kings and queens.