WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is about to suffer a second impeachment in an unprecedented House vote on Wednesday, a week after encouraging a crowd of supporters to “fight like hell” against the results of the little election before invading the US Capitol in a deadly siege.
While Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 did not bring Republican votes in the House, a small but significant number of leaders and legislators are breaking with the party to join the Democrats, saying Trump has violated his oath to protect and defend U.S. democracy .
The impressive collapse of Trump’s last days in office, against alarming warnings of more violence on the part of his followers, leaves the nation in an uncomfortable and unknown situation before Democrat Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
“If inviting a crowd to the uprising against your own government is not an impeachment event, then what is it?” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., an impeachment article writer.
Trump, who would become the only U.S. president twice accused of impeachment, faces a single charge of “inciting insurrection”.
The four-page impeachment resolution trusts Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s electoral victory, including a rally at the White House on the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, to build his case for crimes and misdemeanors, as required by the Constitution .
Trump was not responsible for the riot, suggesting that it was the impulse to expel him, and not his actions around the bloody mutiny 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 had to fight for security and hide while rioters took control of the Capitol and delayed the last step for hours to end Biden’s victory.
The outgoing president did not offer condolences for the dead or injured, just saying: “I don’t want violence”.
At least five Republican lawmakers, including the Republican Party’s third leader in the House, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, were not influenced by the president’s logic. Republicans announced they would vote for Trump’s impeachment, dividing 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.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is said to be angry with Trump, and it is unclear what an impeachment trial would look like. In the House, California’s Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, a key Trump ally, struggled to suggest lighter censorship, but that option fell apart.
So far, Republican deputies John Katko of New York, a former federal prosecutor; Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an Air Force veteran; Fred Upton of Michigan; and Jaime Herrera Beutler, from Washington State, announced that they would also join Cheney to vote for impeachment.
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. The resolution urged Pence to “declare what is obvious to a horrified nation: that the president is unable to successfully fulfill the duties and powers of his office”.
Pence made it clear that he would not do that, saying in a letter to Mayor Nancy Pelosi that it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden”.
The debate over the resolution was intense after lawmakers returned to the Capitol for the first time since the siege.
Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, argued that Trump should go because, as she said in Spanish, he is “loco” – crazy.
In opposition, Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio said the “cancellation culture” was just trying to cancel the president. He said Democrats have been trying to reverse the 2016 election since Trump took office and are ending his term in the same way.
While Republican House leaders are allowing ordinary lawmakers to vote for their conscience on impeachment, it is far from clear that there would be a two-thirds vote in the equally divided Senate to condemn and remove Trump. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over the weekend to ask Trump to “leave as soon as possible.”
With just over a week to the end of Trump’s term, the FBI has threatened to warn of potential armed protests by Trump supporters before Biden’s inauguration. Capitol Police asked lawmakers to be on the alert.
With the new security, lawmakers were forced to pass through metal detectors to enter the Chamber of Deputies, not far from where the Capitol Police, with weapons drawn, had barricaded the door against the protesters. Some Republican lawmakers have complained about the display.
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.
As the resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment, the impeachment bill also details Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” more votes for him and his White House demonstration to “fight like hell” by going to Capitol Hill.
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.
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Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected to show that Trump’s first impeachment was in 2019, not last year.