After US Vice President Mike Pence refused to oust President Donald Trump, the House of Representatives on Wednesday launched the impeachment process, with several key Republicans believed to be backing the Democrat-led initiative just a week before he leaves office.
What may go against Trump is that there’s a section among the Republicans who seems to have run out of patience with Trump and may go with the Democrats.
Late Tuesday night, the House passed a resolution demanding that Pence assume the presidency by invoking Article 25 of the Constitution that allows him, acting with a majority of the cabinet, to remove Trump.
Even before the House voted the resolution, Pence wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our nation.” He added, “I urge you and every member of Congress to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment.”
Trump has been unrepentant about the riot that resulted in the deaths of five people, including one police officer, after his rally of supporters against the election of Joe Biden as President and Kamala Harris as Vice President alleging fraud in the voting.
Despite the word having a menacing ring to it, an impeachment is only the framing of charges by the House for a judicial-style trial in the Senate with the Senators acting as jurors. A two-thirds majority of the Senate—67 members—will have to vote to convict.
Trump’s impeachment failed in 2019 in the Republican-controlled Senate. To convict and throw him out of office, 17 Republican Senators will have to vote for it.
If after impeachment is passed by the House, the Senate trial stretches beyond next Wednesday, when Trump will be out of office, and a conviction, if it comes about, may only have the effect of preventing him from running for office in future, besides being a ringing condemnation.
To speed up the impeachment process, most Representatives gave short speeches of one to two minutes, with Democrats recalling the horror of the riot that reached into the Senate chamber and the Speaker’s Office and asserting that Trump incited an “insurrection”.
In opening debates Wednesday, Democratic lawmaker Ilhan Omar branded Trump a “tyrant”. “The president not only incited an insurrection against our government but has in word and deed led a rebellion,” she told the chamber. “For us to be able to survive as a functioning democracy there has to be accountability.”
But Nancy Mace, a newly-elected Republican congresswoman said that while lawmakers “need to hold the President accountable” over the violence, the speed of the process “poses great questions about the constitutionality.”
Democrat Jim McGovern said: “What Trump did fill me with rage. We were terrorised.”
The draft of the impeachment of Trump has the single charge of “inciting violence against the government of the United States” for his role in the storming of the Capitol by his supporters, who overcame the security and muscled themselves into the Senate chamber, from where Pence had to be taken away by security to a safe zone, and into the office of Pelosi.
Trump telling his supporters “we fight, we fight like hell” before telling them to go to Congress is cited as words of incitement.
WITH AGENCY INPUTS