Second impeachment now looms for Trump
House members likely to vote on the resolution today
WASHINGTON — The House rushed ahead Tuesday toward impeaching President Donald Trump for the deadly Capitol attack, taking time only to try to persuade his vice president to push him out first.
For his part, Trump showed no remorse, blaming impeachment itself for the “tremendous anger” in America.
Already scheduled to leave office next week, Trump is on the verge of becoming the only president in history to be twice impeached.
His incendiary rhetoric at a rally ahead of the Capitol uprising now is in the impeachment charge against him, even as the falsehoods he spread about election fraud still are being championed by some Republicans.
The House convened Tuesday night to vote on urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump with a Cabinet vote.
Shortly before that, Pence said he wouldn’t do so in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The vice president said it wouldn’t be in the best interest of the nation or consistent with the Constitution and that it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden.”
Meanwhile, three Republican lawmakers, including third-ranking House GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming, announced they would vote to impeach Trump today, cleaving the party’s leadership.
“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said in a statement. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Reps. John Katko of New York, a former federal prosecutor, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an Air Force veteran, said they, too, would vote to impeach.
And the New York Times reported Sen. Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell had concluded Trump committed impeachable offenses and believed Democrats’ move to impeach him would make it easier to purge Trump from the party, people familiar with Mcconnell’s thinking said.
Mcconnell has indicated he wants to see the specific article of impeachment that the House is set to approve today, the Times reported, and to hear the eventual arguments in the Senate.
As lawmakers reconvened at the Capitol for the first time since the bloody siege, they also were bracing for more violence ahead of Biden’s inauguration next Wednesday.
“All of us have to do some soul searching,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, imploring other Republicans to join.
Trump, meanwhile, warned the lawmakers off impeachment and suggested it was the drive to oust him that was dividing the country.
“To continue on this path, I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country, and it’s causing tremendous anger,” Trump said.
In his first remarks to reporters since last week’s violence, the outgoing president offered no condolences for those dead or injured, only saying: “I want no violence.”
Impeachment ahead, the House was first pressing Pence and the Cabinet to remove Trump more quickly and surely, warning he is a threat to democracy in the few remaining days of his presidency.
Even before sending his letter about the House resolution calling on Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to declare the president unable to serve, the vice president hadn’t been expected to.
Pence reportedly had a “good meeting” with Trump on Monday. It was their first since the vice president was among those sheltering from the attack.
With Pence’s decision, the House is set to move on impeachment today.
Trump faces a single charge — “incitement of insurrection” — after the most serious and deadly domestic incursion at the Capitol in the nation’s history.
During an emotional debate ahead of the House action, Rep. Norma Torres, D-calif., urged her Republican colleagues to understand the stakes, recounting a phone call from her son as she fled during the siege.
“Sweetie, I’m OK,” she told him. “I’m running for my life.”
But Rep. Jim Jordan, R-ohio, a top Trump ally just honored this week at the White House, refused to concede that Biden won the election outright.
Democratic Rep. Jim Mcgovern, D-mass., tied such talk to the Capitol attack, interjecting: “People came here because they believed the lie.”
A handful of other House Republicans could vote to impeach, but in the Senate, there are not expected to be the two-thirds votes to convict him.
The unprecedented events, with just a week remaining in Trump’s term, are unfolding in a nation bracing for more unrest.
The FBI has warned ominously of potential armed protests in Washington and many states by Trump loyalists ahead of Biden’s inauguration, and Capitol Police warned lawmakers to be on alert.
The inauguration ceremony on the west steps of the Capitol will be off limits to the public.
Lawmakers will be required to pass through metal detectors to enter the House chamber, not far from where Capitol Police barricaded the door against the rioters.
The final days of Trump’s presidency will be like none other as Democrats and a small number of Republicans try to expel him after he incited the mob that violently ransacked the Capitol last week.
In the Senate, Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over the weekend in calling for Trump to “go away as soon as possible.”
Sen. Rob Portman, R-ohio, did not go that far, but Tuesday called on Trump to address the nation and explicitly urge his supporters to refrain from further violence.
Biden has said it’s important to ensure the “folks who engaged in sedition and threatening the lives, defacing public property, caused great damage — that they be held accountable.”
Fending off concerns that an impeachment trial would bog down Biden’s first days in office, the president-elect is encouraging senators to divide their time between taking taking up his priorities of confirming his nominees and approving COVID-19 relief while also conducting the trial.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer suggested in a letter to colleagues Tuesday that the chamber would do both.
As Congress resumed, an uneasiness swept the halls.
More lawmakers tested positive for COVID-19 after sheltering during the siege. Many lawmakers may choose to vote by proxy rather than come to Washington, a process that was put in place last year to limit health risks of travel.
Among Trump’s allies in Congress, House Republican leader Kevin Mccarthy was among those saying “impeachment at this time would have the opposite effect of bringing our country together.”
Democrats say they have the votes for impeachment. The impeachment bill drafted by Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Ted Lieu of California, during the riot lockdown, and joined by Raskin of Maryland and Jerrold Nadler of New York draws from Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat by Biden.