Noose tightens on Trump
Donald Trump faces impeachment for second time, while Nancy Pelosi wants access to nuke button cut off from him
WASHINGTON: US Democrats could start the process to impeach outgoing President Donald Trump on the charge “incitement of insurrection” by his supporters who stormed the Capitol at his instigation as soon as Monday if he doesn’t resign “immediately”.
If the move succeeds, he will become the first US president to be impeached twice.
Democrats are undeterred by the shortage of time available to both impeach Trump and evict him from office before he leaves the White House at the end of his term on January 20.
Trump’s remaining 12 days in the White House seemed increasingly in jeopardy as even Republicans have joined in the growing calls for his removal from office.
“I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator, told The Anchorage Daily, her home state news publication in Alaska. Other Republicans such as Senator Ben Sasse expressed willingness to consider voting for an impeachment motion, if introduced.
Congressional Democrats were moving at breakneck speed to get Trump out of office before January 20, the day when Biden will be sworn in as president.
“It is the hope of members that the president will immediately resign. But if he does not, I have instructed the rules committee to be prepared to move forward with Congressman Jamie Raskin’s 25th amendment legislation and a motion for impeachment,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “Accordingly, the House will preserve every option - including the 25th amendment, a motion to impeach or a privileged resolution for impeachment.”
Raskin’s 25th amendment legislation is about a lesser-known subsection of the constitutional provision that empowers the vice-president and an outside body set by Congress to determine if the president is unfit to continue and then replace him.
The better-known provision empowers the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to oust a president for the same reason.
A four-page draft of the motion of impeachment that was widely cited in US media charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection”.
Trump was impeached on December 18, 2019 by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, but his removal from office, the second and more consequential part of the punishment for a president, was voted down by the Republican-led Senate on February 5, 2020.
Pelosi calls Trump an ‘unhinged president’
In another development, Pelosi said on Friday she has spoken to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about preventing an “unhinged” Trump from ordering military actions including a possible nuclear strike in his final days and hours at the White House.
Pelosi said in a statement to colleagues that she spoke with Mark Milley “to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes” for nuclear war. She said Milley assured her steps are in place.
She said the situation of “this unhinged president could not be more dangerous.”