TRUMP’S GOP SUPPORT ERODING IN CONGRESS
House formally urges Pence to push out Trump; impeachment vote is set for today
The push for an unprecedented second impeachment of President Donald Trump took a dramatic bipartisan turn Tuesday, as several senior House Republicans joined the Democratic effort to remove Trump for his role in inciting an angry mob to storm the Capitol last week and the White House braced for more defections.
The House on Tuesday night approved a resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump with a Cabinet vote and “declare what is obvious to a horrified Nation: That the President is unable to successfully discharge the duties and powers of his office.”
The House approved the resolution by a vote of 223-205, with the support of one Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
Democrats proceeded even though Pence said he would not
do what the resolution asked. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DSan Francisco, he said it would not be in the best interest of the nation and it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden.”
“The facts are very clear,” Pelosi said in a f loor speech. “The president called for this seditious attack. ... He and his family cheered and celebrated the desecration of the Capitol.”
Meanwhile, four Republican lawmakers, including third-ranking House GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming, announced they would vote to impeach Trump on Wednesday, cleaving the Republican leadership, and the party itself.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the f lame of this attack,” said Cheney 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.”
In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy., has concluded that President Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Trump from the party, according to people familiar with McConnell’s thinking.
Even before McConnell’s position was known and Cheney had announced her plans, advisers to the Senate Republican leader had privately speculated that a dozen Republican senators — and possibly more — could ultimately vote to convict Trump in a Senate trial that would follow his impeachment by the House. Seventeen Republicans would be needed to join Democrats in finding him guilty.
After that, it would take a simple majority to disqualify Trump from ever again holding public office.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and one of Trump’s most steadfast allies in Congress, has asked other Republicans whether he ought to call on Trump to resign in the aftermath of last week’s riot at the Capitol, according to three Republican officials briefed on the conversations.
While he has said he is personally opposed to impeachment, McCarthy and other party leaders did not mount an official effort to defeat the push, and he was working on Tuesday to build support for a censure resolution to rebuke the president for his actions.
McCarthy backed the electoral challenges Republicans lodged last week during Congress’ count of the Electoral College ballots, voting twice to overturn Biden’s victory in key swing states even after the siege at the Capitol.
McConnell had broken with Trump just as the rioters were breaching the building, warning of a descent into a “death spiral” for democracy if the efforts were to prevail.
As lawmakers reconvened at the Capitol Tuesday, they were bracing for more violence ahead of Biden’s inauguration, Jan. 20.
“All of us have to do some soul searching,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md. 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.
With Pence’s agreement to invoke the 25th Amendment ruled out, the House will move swiftly to impeachment today.
Trump faces a single charge — “incitement of insurrection” — in the impeachment resolution after the attack on the Capitol.
Republican Reps. John Katko of New York, Kinzinger, and Fred Upton of Michigan announced they, too, would vote to impeach.
But Rep. Jim Jordan, ROhio said the “cancel culture” was just trying to cancel the president. He said the Democrats had been trying to reverse the 2016 election ever since Trump took office and were finishing his term the same way.
Though a handful of House Republicans will join the impeachment vote — and leaders are allowing them to vote as they wish — it’s far from clear there would then be the twothirds vote needed to convict from the narrowly divided Senate. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania did join Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over the weekend in calling for Trump to “go away as soon as possible.”
Unprecedented events, with just over 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 by Trump loyalists ahead of Biden’s inauguration, and Capitol Police urged lawmakers to be on alert. The inauguration ceremony on the west steps of the Capitol will be off limits to the public.
With new security, lawmakers were required to pass through metal detectors Tuesday night to enter the House chamber, not far from where Capitol Police, guns drawn, had barricaded the door against the rioters. Lawmakers were also subject to scanning with metaldetecting wands.
The new security procedures became a point of partisan tension itself, with some Republican members expressing outrage. At least a dozen of the lawmakers pushed past the police or walked around the detectors, including Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, who refused to let the police search her bag after she set off the metal detector.
“I am legally permitted to carry my firearm in Washing ton, D.C. and within the Capitol complex,” Boebert later tweeted, even though House rules specifically prohibit firearms in the chamber. “Metal detectors outside of the House would not have stopped the violence we saw last week — it’s just another political stunt by Speaker Pelosi.”
A Capitol Police officer died from injuries suffered in the riot, and police fatally shot a San Diego woman during the violence.
Three other people died in what authorities said were medical emergencies.
Biden has said it’s important to ensure that 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 presidentelect is encouraging senators to divide their time between taking taking up his priorities of confirming his nominees and approving COVID relief while also conducting the trial.
As Congress resumed, an uneasiness swept the halls. More lawmakers tested positive for COVID-19 after sheltering during the siege. Many lawmakers were voting by proxy rather than come to Washington, a process that was put in place last year to limit the health risks of travel.
The impeachment bill from Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of Los Angeles, Raskin and Jerrold Nadler of New York draws from Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat to Biden.
Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump ally, has said there was no sign of widespread fraud.
Like the resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment, the impeachment legislation also details Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” him more votes, as well as his White House rally ahead of the Capitol siege, in which he encouraged thousands of supporters last Wednesday to “fight like hell” and march to the building.
The mob overpowered police, broke through security lines and windows and rampaged through the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to scatter as they were finalizing Biden’s victory over Trump.
While some have questioned impeaching the president so close to the end of his term, there is precedent. In 1876, during the Ulysses Grant administration, War Secretary William Belknap was impeached by the House the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.
Trump was impeached by the House in 2019 over dealings with Ukraine and acquitted in 2020 by the Senate.