“I join the Senate Democratic leader in asking the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment,” said Pelosi. “If the vice president and the cabinet do not act, Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment, which is the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus and the American people.”
Invoking the 25th Amendment would require Vice President Mike Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to vote to remove Trump from office due to his inability to “fulfill his office’s powers and duties” – an unprecedented step.
Any push from the 25th Amendment faces an unprecedented steep hill to materialize with little time before Biden’s inauguration. Congressional calls, however, underscore the extent to which lawmakers are reeling and furious with the president after the devastation on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Senator Patty Murray, the third in the Senate Democratic leadership, also said it was time to invoke the 25th amendment.
“The most immediate way to ensure that the president is prevented from causing further damage in the next few days is to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office. As history notes, I urge Vice President Pence and the president’s office to place the country before the party and take action, “she said in a statement.
The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, supported Thursday’s removal of Trump from office through the 25th Amendment or impeachment.
“Invoking the 25th Amendment is the quickest way to do this, and convenience should be our goal,” she said, adding: “If the Vice President and the Cabinet do not act, we have a duty to seek impeachment.”
Other prominent Democrats called for impeachment in the wake of the Capitol crowd violence that occurred when a joint session of Congress met to count the electoral votes that confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory amid Trump’s false claims that the election was defrauded against him.
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House Speaker, tweeted on Thursday: “Donald Trump must be impeached, convicted and removed from office immediately.”
Three members of the Chamber’s Judiciary Committee – Reps. Jamie Raskin, David Cicilline and Ted Lieu – an impeachment resolution is circulating among colleagues calling Trump’s actions an abuse of power. They wrote that Trump violated the constitution by “deliberately inciting violence against the United States government”.
All four members of the progressive “squad” of Democratic lawmakers – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley – also demonstrated in support of impeachment after the violent siege of the Capitol.
“I am writing impeachment articles. Donald J. Trump should be removed from the House of Representatives and removed from the United States Senate. We cannot allow him to remain in office, it is a matter of preserving our Republic and we need to fulfill our oath,” he tweeted. Omar on Wednesday.
“This is about Donald Trump, period. He called people to DC and gave them marching orders. He needs to be impeached and removed immediately,” Tlaib tweeted on Wednesday.
With Biden’s inauguration date fast approaching January 20, it is highly unlikely that there will be adequate time or political will in Congress for any kind of impeachment effort.
The Democratic-led House of Representatives impeached Trump as early as 2019. To oust a president from office through impeachment, the Senate must vote to convict after an impeachment trial. This did not happen in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Trump was finally acquitted.
After the pro-Trump crowd was expelled from the Capitol, lawmakers met again later in the evening to continue counting electoral votes. Congress completed the count and ended Biden’s victory in the early hours of Thursday morning.
This story was updated with further developments on Thursday.
CNN’s Alex Rogers and Michael Warren contributed to this report.