Democratic congressional candidate Ilhan Omar speaks at the DFL election night watch on Nov. 3, 2020 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. REUTERS / Eric Miller
Eric Miller | Reuters
The riot in Washington that broke out on Wednesday has renewed the debate among Democrats about impeaching President Donald Trump or removing him from office through the 25th amendment to the constitution.
Pressure from some of the most liberal members of the Democratic Party emerged as chaos enveloped the nation’s capital and came just two weeks before Trump will be forced to leave office anyway when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated.
It is extremely unlikely that Congress will rally enough support to remove, or even get close to, the president from office by either method, and it would require the support of Republicans. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Democratic representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said they supported impeachment.
Donald J. Trump instigated this violence and is directly responsible for this coup attempt, Pressley wrote on Twitter. “He must be immediately deposed and removed from office.”
Omar wrote, “I am drafting articles of impeachment. Donald J. Trump should be impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the United States Senate.”
“We cannot keep him in office, it is a matter of preserving our Republic and we must keep our oath,” she said.
It is not clear whether impeachment will receive support from most Democrats, and it is almost certain that there will not be enough time to remove him that way. If Democrats were to impeach Trump after he stepped down and he was convicted in the Senate, he would not be allowed to take office again.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Who was evacuated from the floor of the House earlier in the day when protesters stormed the Capitol, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several other House Democrats are now seeking a different means of hastening the moment Trump is constitutionally mandated to leave office.
Democratic representatives Ted Lieu of California and David Cicilline of Rhode Island were preparing a letter to Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday demanding that he invoke the 25th amendment to the constitution to oust the president, reported NBC News.
Under that amendment, the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can no longer declare the president in office.
However, if the president disputes the statement, it would take two-thirds of the House and Senate to override and dismiss him, an even heavier burden than impeachment, requiring a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate .
Pence’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on the draft letter.
Trump was impeached by the House last year on charges that he abused his power by urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open an investigation into Biden and his family. He was acquitted by the Senate.
Invoking the 25th Amendment has been discussed intermittently during Trump’s presidency, including recently.
In October, Pelosi introduced legislation that would create a committee that would review presidential suitability for office, as envisioned by the 25th Amendment, but insisted it had nothing to do with Trump. Legislation has not made it law.
Back in 2017, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein proposed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment, The New York Times reports. Rosenstein called the report factually incorrect.
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