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US Congress moving swiftly to oust Trump
Democrats plan to send the article of impeachment to the Senate for a trial to convict the president, either before he leaves office at the end of his term on January 20 or after.
US House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday to call upon Vice-President Mike Pence to oust President Donald Trump invoking the 25th Amendment. If he doesn’t in the next 24 hours, the chamber will vote to impeach Trump on Wednesday, making him the first president impeached twice.
Democrats plan to then send the article of impeachment to the Senate for a trial to convict the president, either before he leaves office at the end of his term on January 20 or after.
Efforts to remove President Trump from office gathered momentum amid other major developments.
Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, became the third Trump cabinet member to resign. Two Capitol police officers were suspended for supporting the rioters and 17 others came under scrutiny for doing the same. Warnings were issued by FBI of more attacks if Trump was removed from office before the end of his term. Bill Belichick, a celebrated American football coach, turned down Trump’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honour accorded to Americans for exceptional contribution to the country.
Trump has remained out of public sight and sound after Twitter and Facebook shut down his accounts, depriving him of his loudest bullhorns, just hours after a mob of his supporters incited by his lies about election fraud stormed the Capitol, horrifying democracies around the world.
Democrats on Monday introduced a resolution urging Pence to lead the cabinet to declare Trump unfit to govern under the 25th Amendment which empowers the vice-president to sideline the president for being unfit to govern.
The resolution recalls the horrific events of the day when Pence was whisked away by security personnel shortly after he had started the joint session of Congress to certify Biden’s election victory. And it reminds him that as he took shelter in a secure location from the mob that was chanting “Hang Mike Pence”. Trump had egged them on, tweeting “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country’”.
The article of impeachment laid out the case against Trump very clearly. “Incited by President Trump, a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced members of congress and the vice-president, interfered with the joint sessions’ solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.”
And, it concluded, “In all of this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States, and its institutions of government. He threatened the integrity of 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 of the United States.
The article further said that by such conduct, he has demonstrated that “he will remain a threat to national security, democracy and the constitution if allowed to remain in office.”
The article of impeachment introduced Monday by Democrats charges the president with “incitement of insurrection” and bluntly blames him for the January 6 attack on US congress.
