Trump administration in chaos in final days
Staff members leaving; Democrats threaten impeachment
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump’s administration plunged deeper into crisis Thursday as more officials resigned in protest, prominent Republicans broke with him, and Democratic congressional leaders threatened to impeach him for encouraging a mob that stormed the Capitol a day earlier.
hat was already shaping up as a volatile final stretch to the Trump presidency took on an air of national emergency as the White House emptied out and some Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a cascade of Democrats calling for Trump to be removed from office without waiting the 13 days until the inauguration of Presidentelect Joe Biden.
The prospect of actually short- circuiting Trump’s tenure in its last days appeared remote. Despite a rupture with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence privately ruled out invoking the disability clause of the 25th Amendment to sideline the president, as many had urged that he and the Cabinet do, according to officials. Democrats suggested they could move quickly to impeachment, a step that would have its own logistical and political challenges.
But the highly charged debate about Trump’s capacity to govern even for less than two weeks underscored the depth of anger and anxiety after the invasion of
the Capitol that forced lawmakers to evacuate, halted the counting of the Electoral College votes for several hours and left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer who died Thursday.
Ending a day of public silence, Trump posted a 2-½-minute video on Twitter on Thursday evening denouncing the mob attack in a way that he had refused to do a day earlier. He declared himself “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” and told those who broke the law that “you will pay.”
While he did not give up his false claims of election fraud, he finally conceded defeat. “A new administration will be inaugurated Jan. 20,” Trump acknowledged. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”
The video statement came after a day of disarray in the West Wing, where officials expressed growing alarm about the president’s erratic behavior and sought to keep more staff members from marching out the door. The White House meltdown grew so acute that it raised questions about who would run the country until Jan. 20.
But the president retains a core of strong backers among elected officials and grassroots Republicans, and aides hoped the latest statement would at least stanch the bleeding within his own party. Ivanka Trump, his eldest daughter, called lawmakers before it posted, promising it would reassure them.
The video also appeared aimed at inoculating him against possible legal threats, coming shortly after the chief federal prosecutor for Washington left open the possibility of investigating the president for illegally inciting the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and show strength.
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, had warned Trump of just that danger Wednesday as aides frantically tried to get the president to intervene and publicly call off rioters, which he did only belatedly, reluctantly and halfheartedly.
“We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Michael Sherwin, the U. S. attorney in Washington, told reporters. Asked if that included Trump, he did not rule it out. “We’re looking at all actors,” he repeated. “If the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”
Washington remained on edge Thursday, awakening as if from a nightmare that turned out to be real and a changed political reality that caused many to reassess the future. As debris was swept up, businesses and storefronts remained boarded up, thousands of National Guard troops fanned out around the city, and some of the participants in the attack were arrested. Amid scrutiny over the security breakdown, the Capitol Police chief and the Senate sergeant-at-arms resigned.
The main focus, however, was on Trump. Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. But after the vice president refused to take their telephone calls, Pelosi told reporters that she would pursue impeachment if he did not act.
“While it’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America,” Pelosi said, calling Trump’s actions Wednesday a “seditious act.”
“This president should not hold office one day longer,” said Schumer, who will become majority leader with the seating of two Democrats elected to the Senate in Georgia this week and the inauguration of Vice President- elect Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker.
Biden would not address whether Trump should remain in office but called Wednesday “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation” and forcefully laid blame at the president’s feet after years of stirring the pot. “I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming,” he said. “But that isn’t true. We could see it coming.”
Even aides to Trump quietly discussed among themselves the possibility of invoking the 25th
Amendment, and several prominent Republicans and Republican- leaning business groups endorsed the idea, including John Kelly, a former White House chief of staff to Trump; Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland; and Michael Chertoff, a former homeland security secretary under President George W. Bush. The conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal called on Trump to resign, terming his actions “impeachable.”
But Pence, several Cabinet secretaries and other administration officials concluded that the 25th Amendment was an unwieldy mechanism to remove a president, according to people informed about the discussions.
Even before Pence’s refusal became known, the chances that they would pursue it appeared less plausible af ter Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, on Thursday became the first Cabinet secretary to resign in protest of the president’s encouragement of the mob, with others potentially to follow.
John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Trump who broke with him, said the idea was misguided. “People glibly have been saying it’s for situations like this,” he said in an interview. In fact, he said, the process of declaring a president unable to discharge his duties is drawn out and could lead
to the chaos of having two people claiming to be president simultaneously.
While an impeachment conviction would only strip Trump of his power days earlier than he is set to lose it anyway, it could also disqualify him from running again in 2024. And even if another impeachment might not be any more successful than the first one, in which he was acquitted by the Senate last year in the Ukraine pressure scheme, advocates argued that the mere threat of it could serve as a deterrent for the remaining days of his tenure.
Despite ransacking the Capitol, the mob failed to stop Congress from counting the Electoral College votes in the final procedural stage of the election held Nov. 3. After the rioters were cleared from the building, lawmakers voted down efforts by Trump’s Republican allies to block electors from swing states and formally sealed Biden’s victory at 3:41 a.m. Thursday with Pence presiding in his role as president of the Senate.
Behind the scenes, Trump railed about Pence, who refused to use his position presiding over the electoral count to block it despite the president’s repeated demands.
The vice president, who for four years had remained loyal to Trump to the point of obsequiousness, was angry in return at the president’s public lashing. Sen. James Inhofe, R- Okla., told
The Tulsa World that Pence privately expressed a sense of betrayal by Trump “after all the things I’ve done for him.”
Chao stepped down a day after her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, forcefully repudiated Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
In addition to three White House aides who resigned Wednesday, others stepping down included Matthew Pottinger, deputy national security adviser; Tyler Goodspeed, acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers; and Mick Mulvaney, former acting White House chief of staff, who has been serving as a special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Also leaving were two other National Security Council aides as well as officials at the Justice and Commerce departments. Gabriel Noronha, a Trump appointee who worked on Iran issues at the State Department office, was fired after tweeting that the president was “entirely unfit to remain in office.”
Former Attorney General William Barr, perhaps the president’s most important defender until stepping down last month after a falling out, denounced Trump. In a statement to The Associated Press, Barr said that the president’s actions were a “betrayal of his office and supporters” and that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.”