WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress laid plans for swift impeachment of President Donald Trump, demanding decisive, immediate action to ensure an “unhinged” commander in chief can’t add to the damage they say he’s inflicted in his final days in office.
As the country comes to terms with the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters that left five dead, the crisis that appears to be among the final acts of his presidency is deepening like few others in the nation’s history. With less than two weeks until he’s gone, Democrats want him out — now — and he has few defenders speaking up for him in his own Republican Party.
“We must take action,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared Friday on a private conference call with Democrats. A person on the call said Pelosi also discussed other ways Trump might be forced to resign.
And one prominent Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told the Anchorage Daily News that Trump simply “needs to get out.”
The Articles of Impeachment are expected to be introduced in the House on Monday, with a House vote as soon as Wednesday. However, there’s little chance that the Republican-led Senate would hold a trial and vote on convicting Trump in less than two weeks.
The Senate is not set to resume full sessions until Jan. 20, which is Inauguration Day, and it’s hard to see the benefit of impeaching Trump while President-elect Joe Biden is being sworn into office.
Two-thirds of the Senate is needed to convict, and this would be unlikely even if the chamber did somehow come back in session to hold a trial and vote. While many Republican senators have disparaged Trump’s actions in the last week, several Republicans have already said they think impeachment would divide the country even further just ahead of Biden’s inauguration.
Still, action by the House would still make Trump the first president in history to be impeached twice. And it could include a ban on holding public office, ending Trump’s ability to run in 2024.
In normal order, there would be an impeachment investigation and the evidence would be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, which would hold hearings, draft articles and send them to the full house. That’s what happened in 2019, when the House impeached Trump over his dealings with the president of Ukraine. It took three months.
This time, with so few days to move — and a feeling among Democrats that there is little need to investigate what happened, since most members of Congress were in the Capitol when the mob broke in — Pelosi would likely hold a floor vote with no hearings or committee action. Approving the articles takes only the majority. Democrats narrowly control the House, 222-211.
Once the House votes to impeach, the articles and evidence are sent to the Senate, where a trial is held and there are final votes to convict or acquit, as the Senate did in early February of last year.
The final days of Trump’s presidency are spinning toward a chaotic end as he holes up at the White House, abandoned by many aides, top Republicans and Cabinet members. After refusing to concede defeat in the November election, he has now promised a smooth transfer of power. But even so, he says he will not attend the inauguration — the first such presidential snub since just after the Civil War.
In Congress, where many have watched and reeled as the president spent four years breaking norms and testing the nation’s guardrails of democracy, Democrats are unwilling to take further chances. The mayhem that erupted Wednesday at the Capitol stunned the world and threatened the traditional peaceful transfer of power.
The Democrats are considering lightning-quick action. A draft of their Articles of Impeachment accuses Trump of abuse of power, saying he “willfully made statements that encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — imminent lawless action at the Capitol,” according to a person familiar with the details who was granted anonymity to discuss them.
Senators from a bipartisan group convened their own call to consider options for congressional action, according to an aide granted anonymity to reveal the private discussions.
Not helpful, the White House argued. Trump spokesman Judd Deere said, “A politically motivated impeachment against a President with 12 days remaining in his term will only serve to further divide our great country.”
Trump was tweeting again Friday, his Twitter account reinstated after a brief ban, and he reverted to an aggressive statement that his supporters must not be “disrespected” after he had sent out a calmer Thursday video decrying the violence. Toward evening, Twitter said it was permanently suspending him from its platform, citing “risk of further incitement of violence.”
The soonest the Senate could begin an impeachment trial under the current calendar would be Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.
Conviction in the Republican Senate at this late date would seem unlikely, though in a sign of Trump’s shattering of the party many Republicans were silent on the issue.
One Trump ally, Republican Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, did speak up, saying as the White House did that “impeaching the President with just 12 days left in his term will only divide our country more. "
McCarthy said he has reached out to Biden and plans to speak with the Democratic president-elect about working together to “lower the temperature.”
But Murkowski said she wants Trump to resign now, not wait for Biden’s swearing in on Jan. 20.
“I want him out,” she said in a telephone interview with the Anchorage newspaper.
Another leading Republican critic of Trump, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, said he would “definitely consider” impeachment.
Strong criticism of Trump, who urged the mob to march to the Capitol, continued unabated.
“Every day that he remains in office, he is a danger to the Republic,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Schiff, who led Trump’s impeachment in 2019, said in a statement that Trump “lit the fuse which exploded on Wednesday at the Capitol.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, tweeted that some people ask, why impeach a president who has only a few days left in office?
“The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government,” Sanders said.
Pelosi and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer both had private calls with Biden late Friday.
The article of impeachment circulated by the three Democrats charges Trump with abuse of power and says he “willfully made statements that encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — imminent lawless action at the Capitol.”
It says the behavior is consistent with Trump’s prior efforts to “subvert and obstruct” the results of the election and references his recent call with the Georgia Secretary of State, in which he said he wanted to find more votes after losing the state to Biden.
They have called on Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to force Trump from office. It’s a process for removing the president and installing the vice president to take over.
Pelosi said later that option remains on the table. But action by Pence or the Cabinet now appears unlikely, especially after two top officials, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, suddenly resigned in the aftermath of the violence and would no longer be in the Cabinet to make such a case.
Trump had encouraged loyalists at a rally Wednesday at the White House to march on the Capitol where Congress was certifying the Electoral College tally of Biden’s election.
Biden, meanwhile, said he is focused on his job as he prepares to take office. Asked about impeachment, he said, “That’s a decision for the Congress to make.”
The House impeached Trump in 2019, but the Republican-led Senate acquitted him in early 2020.
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