A group of advisers to members of the U.S. House of Representatives plans to summon members of the U.S. Senate to convict former President Trump on the impeachment charge of “inciting an insurrection”.
The request was explained in a draft letter that was being distributed on Wednesday at the Capitol. A copy was obtained by Fox News.
The letter offers no indication as to whether the circulating advisers work for Democrats or Republicans in the House or for members of both parties. In the end it states that the signatories were “being collected”.
No signers were listed in the copy Fox News obtained.
The letter states that on January 6, “our workplace was attacked by a violent mob that was trying to prevent the electoral college votes from counting. This mob was incited by former President Donald J. Trump and his political allies, some of which we spend every day in the halls of work. “
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The letter says several advisers took steps to protect themselves on January 6, after being brought up in an era of mass shootings and other horrific events in America over the past quarter century.
“Many of us attended school in the post-Columbine era,” says the letter, referring to a massacre at a Colorado high school in 1999, “and we were trained to respond to situations of active snipers in our classrooms. While the crowd smashed the Capitol Police barricades, smashed doors and windows and advanced to the Capitol with vests and weapons, many of us hid behind chairs and under desks or protected ourselves in offices. frantically tried to talk to bosses and colleagues as they fled for their lives. “
The letter argues that Trump deserves conviction.
“On January 6, the ex-president broke the 230-year legacy of the peaceful transition of power in the United States by inciting a crowd to interrupt the counting of polling station votes,” the letter says. “Six people died. A Capitol policeman – one of our co-workers who guards and greets us every day – was beaten to death. The attack on our workplace was inspired by lies told by the former president and others on the election results in an unfounded month-long effort to reject votes legally cast by the American people. “
Whether Trump is guilty of impeachment charges in the House is what a planned Senate trial will determine.
On January 13, a week after the Capitol rebellion, the U.S. House accused Trump of “inciting an insurrection” in connection with the January 6 rebellion, linking the rebellion to a Trump speech given at an outdoor rally nearby that day.
“If you don’t fight like the devil, you won’t have a country anymore,” said Trump at one point.
The impeachment article was delivered to the Senate on Monday, with senators sworn in as impeachment jurors on Tuesday.
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The trial is scheduled for February – although 45 Senate Republicans opposed the plan on Tuesday in a procedural vote, claiming that a trial should not be held because Trump is no longer in office.
Others argued that an impeachment trial would simply further divide the US
US Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., Who called for a procedural vote on Tuesday, later argued that the opposition of 45 Republican Party members meant that Trump’s impeachment trial would be “dead on arrival” without chance to result in a Trump conviction.
Chad Pergram of Fox News contributed to this story.