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US Capitol riots: Donald Trump heading for second impeachment
Democrats are undeterred by the shortage of time available to both impeach and evict him from office before he leaves the White House at the end of his term on January 20, 2021
US Democrats could start the process to impeach outgoing President Donald Trump on the charge “incitement of insurrection” by his supporters who stormed the Capitol at his instigation as soon as Monday if he doesn’t resign “immediately”.
If the move succeeds, he will become the first US president to be impeached twice.
Democrats are undeterred by the shortage of time available to both impeach Trump and evict him from office before he leaves the White House at the end of his term on January 20.
Trump’s remaining 12 days in the White House seemed increasingly in jeopardy as even Republicans have joined in the growing calls for his removal from office.
“I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage,” Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator, told The Anchorage Daily, her home state news publication in Alaska. Other Republicans such as Senator Ben Sasse expressed willingness to consider voting for an impeachment motion, if introduced.
Twitter, however, didn’t wait any longer. It “permanently suspended” Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence”, it said in a post.
Trump is reported to have tried to circumvent the ban by posting under the official account of @POTUS (short for President Of The United States) , but Twitter caught his move and shut it down.
The social media platform had initially blocked Trump’s account for 12 hours. Earlier on Friday, Twitter had banned Trump’s personal lawyer Sidney Powell, the purveyor of the US president’s election fraud claims, and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who has suggested the use of presidential powers to seize voting machines to prove Trump’s claims of poll irregularities.
Facebook and Instagram had locked Trump’s accounts in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection targeting the US Capitol, a centuries-old building that houses both chambers of Congress. And Google purged Parler, a self-acclaimed right-wing alternative to Twitter, from its entire suite of online platforms.
President-elect Joe Biden slammed Trump in remarks to introduce new members of his cabinet, saying he has been a worse president than feared. Biden welcomed the president’s announcement that he will not attend the inauguration, saying that was one of the few things he agreed with Trump on.
But he refused to associate himself with his congressional colleagues’ move to oust Trump, saying he will leave it to them.
Congressional Democrats were moving at breakneck speed to get Trump out of office before January 20, the day when Biden will be sworn in as president.
“It is the hope of members that the president will immediately resign. But if he does not, I have instructed the rules committee to be prepared to move forward with Congressman Jamie Raskin’s 25th amendment legislation and a motion for impeachment,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. “Accordingly, the House will preserve every option - including the 25th amendment, a motion to impeach or a privileged resolution for impeachment.”
Raskin’s 25th amendment legislation is about a lesser-known subsection of the constitutional provision that empowers the vice-president and an outside body set by Congress to determine if the president is unfit to continue and then replace him.
The better-known provision empowers the vice-president and a majority of the cabinet to oust a president for the same reason.
A four-page draft of the motion of impeachment that was widely cited in US media charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection”.
It said, “In all of this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coordinate branch of government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
Trump was impeached on December 18, 2019 by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, but his removal from office, the second and more consequential part of the punishment for a president, was voted down by the Republican-led Senate on February 5, 2020.
Trump’s second possible impeachment has the possibility of being more consequential than the first one. With the Senate going under the control of the Democrats on January 20, Democrats can complete the process.
According to reports, Democrats have discussed the possibility of carrying on with the impeachment process, if not wrapped up by inauguration day, and impeach and convict him as well, if the motion gets enough support, which will permanently ban him for running for any federal office, which would bar Trump from running for the White House again.
However, the impeachment move is serious enough for the White House to recognise and oppose it. “A politically motivated impeachment against a President with 12 days remaining in his term will only serve to further divide our great country,” said spokesman Judd Deere.
The Republican leadership, those still aligned with Trump, has made the same argument - that it will be divisive.
