Trump ‘insurrection’ impeachment proceedings begin

Members of the US House of Representatives gathered yesterday to vote to impeach President Donald Trump a week before the in au gu ra tion of president-elect Joe Biden.

Mr Trump was charged with “incitement of insurrection” after a mob ransacked Capitol Hill last week to try to prevent Congress from certifying Mr Biden’s election victory.

“He incited a mob, he deployed the mob and he urged the mob on to undermine what? To undermine the counting of votes to determine who the president of the United States was,” House majority leader Steny Hoyer said on MSNBC before the vote.

The poll was ex pect ed to largely break down along party lines, but a few Republicans pledged to join their Democratic colleagues and vote to impeach the president. Chief among them was Liz Cheney, the House’s third highestranking Republican.

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing,” she said.

“None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not.”

Dem o crats opted to move forward with impeachment after Vice President Mike Pence rebuffed the non-binding resolution they passed on Tuesday asking him and the Cabinet to remove Mr Trump by invoking the 25th amendment to the US Constitution.

If the House sub mits the article of impeachment to the Senate, the up per cham ber must put Mr Trump on trial.

A Sen ate con vic tion could bar Mr Trump from holding federal office again. Mr Trump strongly hinted that he intends to run for a second term as president in 2024.

But the constitution requires that two thirds of the Senate vote in fa vour of conviction for the president to face any penalties.

The Senate failed to muster this majority last year when only 48 senators voted to convict Mr Trump of abuse of power over allegations that he tried to pressure Ukraine into investigating Mr Biden’s family.

At the time, Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to join Democrats in voting to convict Mr Trump.

But The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is privately supportive of Mr Trump’s impeachment as a means of effectively purging him from the Republican party.