TRUMP IMPEACHED FOR SECOND TIME
10 House Republicans join Democrats in 232-197 vote; others from GOP rebuke president
WASHINGTON — Democrats declared Donald Trump an “insurrectionist” and “aspiring tyrant” as the House on Wednesday made him the first president to be impeached twice.
As expected, every Texas Democrat supported impeachment. Even a few Texas Republicans said Trump’s conduct well may have been impeachable, though they didn’t support the effort.
Texans offered some of the harshest condemnation of the president, who’s accused of provoking last week’s fatal rioting at the Capitol by continuing to deny that he lost the election.
At a rally before the rioting started, Trump told his supporters to “fight much harder” as members of Congress prepared to certify his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.
Five people died when Trump’s supporters stormed the building.
“Donald Trump is the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-san Antonio, who will serve on the team prosecuting Trump in the Senate. “If inciting a deadly insurrection is not enough to get a president impeached, then what is?”
“The president of the United States is an insurrectionist,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-houston. “He led an insurrection against the United States of America.”
The historic 232-197 vote sends articles to the Senate, where a trial is unlikely to happen before Biden takes office.
While 10 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach the president — and many more GOP members chastised him — no Texas Republicans crossed party lines.
A few appeared close. Rep. Chip Roy Austin called Trump’s conduct “impeachable,” but said the articles of impeachment are too “flawed” to support.
“I wish my Democratic colleagues had worked with us to draft better articles,” Roy said in an interview on Fox News before the vote.
Rep. Michael Mccaul of Austin, a former federal prosecutor whose district stretches from Houston to the state capital, said he opposed impeachment “with a heavy heart” because “rushed justice is not the solution to mob violence.”
“I did not come to this decision lightly,” Mccaul said. “And I truly fear there may be more facts that come to light in the future that will put
me on the wrong side of this debate.”
Trial not certain
The Senate is out until Jan. 19, and Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell has said he will not call senators back for an emergency session to hold a trial.
There’s some disagreement among experts about whether a president can be tried after leaving office. But even Mcconnell hasn’t ruled out voting to convict Trump if Democrats launch a trial as they take control of the chamber after winning the majority a week ago.
“I have not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented,” Mcconnell said.
Few Republicans in the House defended Trump’s actions on Wednesday, but they still blasted Democrats’ “obsession” with removing the president from office, going so far as to impeach him just days before Biden’s inauguration.
Republicans criticized the process, which lacked the typical investigations and committee hearings, saying it would set a new precedent.
Impeaching Trump, they warned, would martyr the president to his supporters.
“You will have made him even stronger,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Houston in a statement said he couldn’t support impeachment because the process lacked a “sober review of the facts,” even as he said Trump at his rally “whipped many of those present into a frenzy that contributed, in part, to the assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of several American citizens, including at least one Capitol Hill police officer.”
Crenshaw was one of several Texas Republicans who supported Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed lawsuit to overturn election results in four battleground states last month.
On Wednesday he said in a
statement also signed by Roy that “no president should ever, among other things, promote clearly unconstitutional theories that risk the stability of our nation and, in particular, do so to the detriment of the peaceful transition of power.”
Democrats, however, called Trump a “clear and present danger” and said swift action is necessary.
Pelosi invokes JFK in speech
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened the debate by imploring members to “search your souls.”
She quoted from the speech John F. Kennedy planned to give in Dallas before he was assassinated: “We in this country, in this generation, are, by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.”
The words “resonate even more now,” she said. “We here in the House have a sacred obligation to stand for truth, to stand up for the constitution, to stand as guardians of the Republic.”
“After failing completely in his repeated attempts to intimidate both Republican election officials into committing fraud and Republican-appointed judges into ignoring our Constitution, he made a desperate attempt last
week to block the final election count and prevent the peaceful transition of power essential to democracy,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-austin. “Today, we not only demand accountability for his gross misconduct, but
more importantly we declare to the next Trump-like aspiring tyrant: ‘Not in America, we love our democracy too much.’”
In his first public appearance since the attack, Trump said Tuesday during his visit to South Texas that “now is the time for our nation to heal, and it’s time for peace and calm.”
Nevertheless, Tuesday he also called the impeachment proceedings “a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of politics” and blamed his foes for “causing tremendous anger and division.”
“Which is very dangerous for the USA, especially at this very tender time,” Trump said, later adding: “We believe in the rule of law not in violence or rioting.”
As the House debated impeachment Wednesday, the White House sent out a new statement from the president: “In light of reports of more demonstrations, I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind. That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for. I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-tyler, who has gone further than perhaps any other member of the Texas delegation in seeking to overturn the election results, instead turned his attention to Pelosi and Democrats, who he accused of stoking tensions.
“This is so dangerous what you’re doing,” said Gohmert, who had filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results. “You’re using this as a weapon.”
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-houston, called such assertions by Gohmert and other Republicans “gaslighting that is masquerading as debate in this chamber today.”
“I was in this chamber when the president assembled and unleashed a mob to attack the United States Capitol and the United States Congress, the elected representatives of the people,” the moderate Democrat said in an unusually fiery speech on the House floor. “By doing so, he incited an insurrection against our representative democracy itself.”