DON’T COUNT ON A SPEEDY TRIAL!
Senate impeach action unlikely until after Trump leaves
As the cries grew louder Saturday to remove President Trump over his role in inciting Wednesday’s Capitol invasion, the Senate made clear it would take no action on House Democrats’ effort to re-impeach him until he is out of office.
Under a timeline issued to Senate colleagues Friday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said any House resolution on the matter could not be transmitted to the upper chamber until Jan. 19 based on the body’s current calendar.
House impeachment managers could present their case — which would accuse Trump of “inciting an insurrection” at the Capitol — to the assembled Senate that same day, McConnell’s memo noted.
But under impeachment rules, debate and votes could not begin until 1 p.m. the following day — an hour after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn into office at noon on Jan. 20.
“The Senate trial would therefore begin after President Trump’s term has expired,” McConnell wrote, according to The Washington Post, raising the question of whether the effort is moot.
With the 50-50 Senate still in Republican hands until Jan. 20, when Kamala Harris becomes vice president and gives the Democrats the majority, it would take a unanimous vote of all 100 senators to override McConnell’s calendar — a remote possibility. In other developments Saturday:
Reports citing sources close to the president said Trump had no plans to resign or turn over power to Vice President Mike Pence in exchange for a pardon despite rumors that he has toyed with the idea. The president has still not ruled out the possibility of pardoning himself.
Pence had yet to rule out invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, according to a report.
Still, Pence’s team is worried that such an attempt or the start of an impeachment process might trigger Trump into action, which puts the nation at risk, a source told CNN.
Pence’s goal for now is to ensure there’s a smooth transition for President-elect Joe Biden’s team, as well as making sure Biden is prepared to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, the network reported.
As election officials in Georgia verified signatures on absentee ballots last month, Trump pressured the lead investigator to “find the fraud, telling him it would make him “a national hero,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Enraged that Atlanta federal prosecutors were not investigating allegations of fraud to his satisfaction, Trump also successfully pressured the city’s top US Attorney to resign, the paper said.
A majority of Americans want Trump immediately removed from office, a poll showed. The Reuters/Ipsos survey found 57 percent of respondents wanted Trump gone, while 80 percent of Republicans said they would prefer he finish his term. But 70 percent of Trump voters condemned the violence, and two-thirds called the rioters “criminals” or “fools.”
Michael Sherwin, the US attorney for Washington, DC, said his office had opened an excessive-force probe into the shooting death of rioter and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.
The FBI was investigating allegations that several active or retired
FDNY members were “present at the events” at the Capitol. Pope Francis on Saturday denounced Wednesday’s violence as an assault on democracy. “I was astonished because they are people so disciplined in democracy,” the pontiff told an Italian news network, referring to US citizens.
As impeachment talk gained steam on Saturday, some legal scholars told The Post a post-term impeachment trial for a former president would be a historical first — and a constitutional impossibility. “A politically motivated impeachment ... will only serve to further divide our great country,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said on Friday.
But in New York, seven members of the city’s congressional delegation, led by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, joined Mayor de Blasio on Saturday to insist on Trump’s impeachment.
“He is a clear and present danger to the health, safety and well-being of the American people,” said Jeffries, chair of the House Democratic Caucus and Pelosi’s heir apparent as speaker.
Jeffries, with Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Nydia Velázquez, Gregory Meeks, Adriano Espaillat, Tom Suozzi and Jamaal Bowman, stood masked on the steps of City Hall and railed against Trump and the “domestic terrorists” they said attacked Congress.
“He should be impeached, convicted . . . and forever banished to the dustbin of history,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries outlined a supercharged impeachment process in the House that would see a “privileged resolution” introduced on Monday, starting a 48-hour clock that could mean an impeachment vote as soon as Wednesday and which would bypass the usual lengthy hearings in the Judiciary Committee. Even with the impeachment measure on track to hit a brick wall in the Senate, Jeffries said the House “has a responsibility to put it on them to act.”
And, Suozzi added, the House’s vote alone could stymie Trump’s ability to pardon those who wreaked havoc on the Capitol — a controversial reading of the Constitution that several legal experts discredited.
“He’ll be the only president in the history of the United States of America to be impeached two times,” Suozzi said. “But that’s the most important thing, removing his pardon power.”
Additional reporting by Jon Levine, Eileen AJ Connelly and Susan Edelman
ON Wednesday, Jan. 6, a line was drawn in the sand. Before that date, critics had unfairly slammed Trump supporters for being violent, resentment-fueled lunatics for four years, but they couldn’t point to any major proof of it.
Yes, the 2017 march on Charlottesville was deadly and shocking, but the protesters involved in that event were white supremacists objecting to the removal of Confederate statues. They weren’t there to support President Trump.
Then, on Jan. 6, the critics were proved right, as thousands of Trump fans — goaded by the president during a rally — encircled the US Capitol and stormed it while Congress tried to certify the election.
The riot that followed embarrassed our nation. The scenes were chaotic and horrifying, with protestors breaking windows and whacking down doors, waving Confederate flags through congressional hallways, using leadership offices as selfie platforms. When it was all over, dozens of officers were injured and five people were dead.
The president did nothing to stop the carnage other than to say inaccurately in a Twitter video that the election was stolen and that his people should go home.
Trump and the mob have given his critics the proof they had always wanted. From this point forward, the rioters will forever be synonymous with Trumpism. His populist platform, which had given voice and hope to marginalized, working-class people across the country, will now be discredited.
Jamie Roe, a Trump voter from Sterling Heights, Mich., said any remaining goodwill toward the president evaporated on Wednesday.
“So did any chance he had to run again,” Roe said, about speculation Trump might campaign for president in 2024. “His brand is ruined. Ruined. He took everything he accomplished and threw it all away. He had an opportunity to use his final weeks in office to push the distribution of the vaccine and give people a chance to miss what he had accomplished. Instead, he used it as a month’s long temper tantrum. “What he did was a betrayal.” I have covered Trump’s conservative populist coalition for more than five years, ever since he rode down the golden escalator in Trump Tower in August 2015 and announced his candidacy.
While the press that day focused on his unorthodox entrance and sharp words on illegal immigrants, people outside elite circles heard an entirely different message about restoring the dignity of work and bringing back their communities from despair.
Although Trump continued to make crass comments about minorities, Gold Star families, a disabled reporter and Megyn Kelly, his appeal grew with working-class Democrats, independents, Evangelical voters and reluctant suburban Republicans. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said in 2016, before he beat Hillary Clinton in an upset that shocked the media, but not his supporters. Even after the Capitol Hill siege, some voters still say they back him: A YouGov poll found that 45 percent of Republicans actively support the actions of the mob, while 43 percent are opposed. And while a handful of Trump’s fans told me they’re still behind him because they have no one else to fight for them in DC, none of them will go on the record.
The majority of Trump supporters I’ve met and interviewed over the years feel like Mike Martin of Erie County. “When he dies he will probably not even have a president’s funeral. Will we even have a Trump presidential library? Probably not,” said Martin, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Martin said none of his friends who voted for Trump support him now — something he thought would never happen.
“All of those years reporters would want to write the story of what Trump would do to lose their vote . . . well, they finally got their story,” he said. “And he has no one to blame but himself.”
While the actions of a few should never tarnish the good intentions of the many, that’s exactly what will happen now.
“The vast majority of people were there just to hear the president speak,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from western Pennsylvania. “The president just went up there and incited them.”
Trump’s “been stoking this for weeks and anybody with a brain could have seen this coming,” Mikus added. “When you play with people’s emotions for a long time, in particular if they are vulnerable, you are playing with fire.”
For Roe, a Republican strategist, this moment is personal: “I’ve had tears running down my face. It’s heartbreaking as an American. I voted for this guy. I voted for him in the primary in 2016. I voted for him in the general election twice.
“If you voted for him, there will be people who will put this one on you.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s four years of good policies — peace agreements in the Middle East, getting tough on trade with China, tax cuts, conservative Supreme Court appointments — will now forever be tainted.
Roe has one word for what Trump did to his legacy and the reasonable, law-abiding Americans who believed in him: “Unconscionable. Yes, it’s unconscionable.”