WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump was about to suffer a second impeachment today, when the House accelerated the vote just a week after he encouraged legalists to “fight like hell” against the election results and then a crowd of his supporters broke into the US Capitol.
During the debate over impeachment articles, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Republicans and Democrats to “search their souls” before the historic afternoon vote. Trump would be the first American president to face two charges.
Trump “must go,” said Pelosi. “He is a clear and present danger to the nation we all love.”
The actual removal seems unlikely before President-elect Joe Biden took office on January 20. A spokesman for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the Republican leader would not agree to bring the House back immediately, all ensuring that a Senate trial could not begin until at least January 19.
But the momentum for action in the Chamber was unstoppable.
The impeachment process came a week after a violent pro-Trump crowd invaded the United States Capitol, sending lawmakers underground and revealing the fragility of the nation’s history of peaceful transfers of power. The riot also forced a reckoning among some Republicans, who stood by Trump during his presidency and, in large part, allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 elections.
Although Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 did not bring Republican votes in the House, at least six House Republicans were breaking with the party to join the Democrats this time, saying that Trump violated his oath to protect and defend U.S. democracy. Among them was Wyoming MP Liz Cheney, the third Republican in the House and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
When two Republican lawmakers – Washington Reps. Dan Newhouse and Jaime Herrera Beutler – announced in plenary that they would vote for impeachment, Trump issued a new statement asking for “NOT violence, NOT breaking the law and NOT vandalism of any kind”. But he has repeatedly refused to take any responsibility for last week’s disturbances.
Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy said for the first time that Trump has responsibility, acknowledging in the House floor before the vote that Biden is the next president and that radical liberal groups were not responsible for the unrest, as some conservatives have falsely claimed .
But McCarthy said he is opposed to impeachment, preferring an “investigation commission” and censorship.
As for threats of further problems from intruders, security was exceptionally strict on Capitol Hill, with shocking images of massive National Guard troops, secure perimeters around the complex, and metal detector screens required for lawmakers entering the House.
“We are debating this historic measure at the crime scene,” said Representative Jim McGovern, D-Mass.
Although McConnell is refusing to speed up an impeachment trial, a Republican strategist told the Associated Press that the Republican Party leader believes Trump has committed impeachment offenses and considers the Democrats’ impeachment an opportunity to reduce the president’s chaotic and divisive control over the country. Republican party.
McConnell called top Republican donors last week to assess what they think about Trump and was told that Trump has clearly crossed the line. McConnell told them he no longer had Trump, said the strategist, who required anonymity to describe McConnell’s conversations.
The New York Times first reported McConnell’s views on impeachment on Tuesday.
The impressive collapse of Trump’s last few days in office, along with warnings of further violence ahead, leaves the nation in an uncomfortable and unknown environment before Biden takes office.
Trump faces a single charge of “inciting insurrection”.
The four-page impeachment resolution is based on Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s electoral victory, including at a White House rally on the day of the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill, to defend “serious crimes” and misdemeanors ”, as required by the Constitution.
Trump was not responsible for the riot, suggesting it was the impulse to expel him, not his actions around the bloody riot that was dividing the country.
“To continue on this path, I think it is causing tremendous danger to our country, and it is causing enormous anger,” Trump said on Tuesday, his first comment to reporters since last week’s violence.
A Capitol policeman died of injuries sustained in the rebellion, and police shot and killed a woman during the siege. Three other people died in what the authorities said were medical emergencies. Lawmakers fought for security and hid while rioters took control of the Capitol, delaying the counting of votes from the Electoral College for hours, which was the last step in ending Biden’s victory.
The six Republican lawmakers, including Cheney, were not influenced by the president’s logic. His support for impeachment divided the Republican leadership and the party itself.
“The President of the United States has summoned this mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame for this attack,” Cheney said in a statement. “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States in his office and in his oath to the Constitution.”
Unlike a year ago, Trump faces impeachment as a weakened leader, having lost his own re-election, as well as the Republican majority in the Senate.
The president was livid with McConnell and Cheney’s perceived disloyalty as requests for her deposition increased. He was also deeply frustrated at not being able to fight back with his closed Twitter account, the fear of which kept most Republicans in line for years, according to White House officials and Republicans close to the west wing who were not allowed to speak publicly about conversations. private.
The team around Trump collapsed, with no plan to fight the impeachment effort. Trump relied on Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to put pressure on Republican senators, while Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called some of his former colleagues on Hill.
Trump was expected to watch much of today’s proceedings on TV at the White House residence and in his private dining room outside the Oval Office.
The House first tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to intervene, passing a resolution Tuesday night asking them to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump from office.
Pence made it clear that he would not do so, saying in a letter to Pelosi that it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden”.
It is far from clear that there will be the equally divided two-thirds vote in the Senate needed to condemn Trump, although at least two Republicans have asked him to “get out as soon as possible.”
The FBI ominously warned of potential protests by Trump supporters before Biden took office. Capitol Police asked lawmakers to be on the alert. Accusations of sedition are being considered for troublemakers.
Biden said it is important to ensure that “people who have been involved in sedition and threatened lives by disfiguring public property have caused great damage – that they are held responsible.”
Moving away from concerns that an impeachment trial would hinder his early days in office, the president-elect is encouraging senators to split their time between assuming their priorities of confirming their nominees and approving the relief from COVID-19 while also conducting the trial. .
The impeachment project is based on Trump’s false statements about his defeat in the Biden elections. Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly rejected cases challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump ally, said there was no sign of widespread fraud.
While some question the impeachment of the president so close to the end of his term, there are precedents. In 1876, under Ulysses Grant, War Secretary William Belknap was impeached by the House on the day he resigned, and the Senate called for a trial months later. He was acquitted.
Trump was impeached in 2019 because of his negotiations with Ukraine, but was acquitted by the Senate in 2020.