The House is prepared to launch an impeachment case against Donald Trump this week if Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet refuse to remove him from office for their role in inciting a crowd that carried out a deadly attack on government headquarters American.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the ultimatum in a letter to colleagues on Sunday night, which described the president as an urgent threat to the nation.
On Monday, the House would move forward with a non-binding resolution that asks Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from his presidential authority. If the measure does not receive unanimous support, as expected, the Chamber will vote on the resolution on Tuesday. Pence, she said, would have “24 hours” to respond.
Pelosi then said that the Chamber “will proceed with the presentation of impeachment legislation.” Although she did not specify an exact timetable, leading Democrats suggested that the House could start proceedings in the middle of the week.
“In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act urgently, because this President poses an imminent threat to both,” she wrote. “As the days go by, the horror of this president’s continued attack on our democracy intensifies, as does the immediate need for action.”
Pelosi noted that the urgency was necessary because Trump would step down on January 20.
She explained that the resolution required Pence to “summon and mobilize the cabinet to activate the 25th amendment to declare the president unable to perform his office.”
According to the procedure, the vice president “would immediately exercise powers as acting president,” she wrote.
On Sunday, Pelosi told 60 Minutes that Trump was “a crazy, troubled and dangerous president of the United States, ”Adding that he did something“ so serious that there should be a case against him ”.
Pence is not expected to take the initiative to expel Trump, although there have been rumors about the 25th amendment option days ago in Washington.
He had previously speculated that House Democrats might try to introduce impeachment articles as early as Monday.
A vaunted strategy would be to condemn the president’s actions quickly, but to delay a Senate impeachment trial for 100 days. This would allow President-elect Joe Biden to focus on other priorities as soon as he takes office on January 20.
Jim Clyburn, the House’s third Democrat and an important ally of Biden, laid out his ideas on Sunday as the country faced the siege of the Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn the election results.
“We are going to give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda up and running,” said Clyburn.
The House Democrats’ momentum came after the office of Colorado Democratic representative Jason Crow released a reading of a call in which Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy “indicated that [the Department of Defense] is aware of other possible threats posed by potential terrorists in the days up to and including Inauguration Day ”.
According to the reading, McCarthy said the Pentagon was “working with local and federal authorities to coordinate security preparations” for January 20.
Crow, a former US army ranger, said he “raised serious concerns about reports that active-duty members of the reserve and military were involved in the insurrection” and urged that “troops deployed for the inauguration … are not sympathetic to domestic terrorists ”. The reading said McCarthy agreed and said he was willing to testify publicly in the coming days.
On Sunday, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey joined Alaskan colleague Lisa Murkowski to ask Trump to “resign and leave as soon as possible.”
“I think the president has disqualified himself to certainly serve again,” said Toomey. “I don’t think he is eligible at all.”
Murkowski, who has long expressed his exasperation at Trump’s conduct in office, told the Anchorage Daily News on Friday that Trump simply “needs to leave.” A third Republican, Sen. Roy Blunt, of Missouri, did not go that far, but on Sunday he warned Trump to be “very careful” in his last days in office.
Corporate America began to link its reaction to Capitol disturbances by linking them to campaign contributions.
Citigroup said it would suspend all federal political donations for the first three months of the year. Citi’s head of global government affairs, Candi Wolff, said in a Friday memo to employees: “We want you to be sure that we will not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law.”
House leaders, furious after the insurrection, seem determined to act against Trump, despite the short term.
Another idea that was being considered was to have a separate vote that would prevent Trump from taking office again. This could only require a simple majority vote of 51 senators, as opposed to impeachment, in which two-thirds of the 100 Senate members must support a conviction.
The Senate was set to be divided equally into 50-50, but under Democratic control as soon as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and the two Democrats who won Georgia’s Senate run-off elections last week took office. Harris would be the Senate tiebreaker vote.
The FBI and other agencies continue to examine the circumstances of the insurrection, including allegations that Pentagon officials loyal to Trump blocked the sending of National Guard troops for three hours after officials asked for help.
“We couldn’t really cross the border into DC without OK and it took some time [coming], ”Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan told CNN.
“I ended up receiving a call from the Army secretary asking if we could enter the city, but we were already mobilizing, we already had our police, we already had our guard mobilized, and we were just waiting for that call. “