Impeachment doubly justified
Donald J. Trump, already in an exclusive club of just three impeached presidents, could soon stand deservedly alone in being impeached twice. If the House proceeds with an article of impeachment introduced Monday and cosponsored by enough members to pass, Trump will have singlehandedly doubled the number of presidential impeachments in U. S. history.
Despite its unprecedented circumstances and timing, with just over a week left in the president’s term, it’s also the most justified such impeachment in history. The plain language and facts of the article, for “incitement of insurrection,” make that clear, noting that a mob incited by Trump “unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress, the vice president, and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”
As the article also notes, Trump and his supporters thereby interfered with a procedure required by the 12th Amendment, the counting of electoral votes, in contravention of the 14th Amendment, the postCivil War measure prohibiting officials who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from ever holding office again. While Presidentelect Joe Biden is likely to be inaugurated before the Senate decides whether to convict and remove Trump from office, the upper chamber also has the power to ban him from federal office, which is pertinent given his threats to run for president in four years.
Trump’s incitement of the rioters to advance on the Capitol and “fight like hell” followed weeks of “false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by state or federal officials,” as the article puts it. Indeed, Trump’s attack on Congress and the election was foreshadowed by his impeachment last year, for inducing a foreign government to interfere with the campaign by withholding aid approved by lawmakers, among other means. If Senate Republicans had bothered to consider those charges in good faith instead of staging a perfunctory show trial, the country might have avoided the latest calamity.
Fresh off their votes last week to overturn the election, House Republicans on Monday nevertheless blocked a resolution urging that Trump be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Vice President Mike Pence, who would have to lead that process, has been silent on the subject. Even after coming under violent attack, too many of the president’s enablers remain committed to their reckless course.