WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is about to be impeached a second time in an unprecedented House vote Wednesday, a week after encouraging a mob of loyalists to “fight hard” against the election results just before the US stormed Capitol in a deadly siege.
While Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 did not garner Republican votes in the House, a small but significant number of leaders and lawmakers break with the party to join the Democrats and say Trump has broken his oath to protect American democracy and defend it.
The stunning collapse of Trump’s last days in office, despite alarming warnings of more violence by his followers, leaves the nation at an awkward and unknown moment before Democrat Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20.
“If inviting a crowd to rebel against your own government isn’t an untouchable event, then what is?” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., An accusation article author.
Trump, who would become the only US president to be impeached twice, faces a single charge of “inciting insurgency.”
The four page deposition resolution relies on Trump’s own inflammatory rhetoric and the lies he spread about Biden’s election victory, including at a White House meeting on the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, to build his case for serious crimes and felonies, as required in the constitution.
Trump took no responsibility for the riot, suggesting that the motive was to expel him rather than his actions around the bloody riot that divided the country.
“To continue on this path, I think it poses tremendous danger to our country, and it causes tremendous anger,” Trump said Tuesday, his first remarks to reporters since last week’s violence.
A Capitol police officer died of the injuries sustained during the riot, and the police shot and killed a woman during the siege. Three other people died in medical emergencies. Lawmakers had to rush for safety and hide when rioters took control of the Capitol and delayed the final step for hours to complete Biden’s victory.
The outgoing president offered no condolences for the dead or injured, merely saying, “I don’t want violence.”
At least five Republican lawmakers, including House GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming third rank, were not guided by the logic of the president. The Republicans announced they would vote to impeach Trump, split the Republican leadership and the party itself.
“The President of the United States has gathered this crowd, gathered the crowd and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said in a statement. “There has never been greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and oath to the constitution.”
Unlike a year ago, Trump is being charged with impeachment as a weakened leader after losing his own reelection and the Republican majority in the Senate.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is said to be angry with Trump, and it is unclear how a trial on impeachment would go. In the House of Representatives, California Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, a prominent Trump ally, tried to instead propose a lighter disapproval, but that option collapsed.
So far Republican representatives John Katko of New York, a former federal prosecutor; Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a veteran of the Air Force; Fred Upton from Michigan; and Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state announced that they too would join Cheney to vote for impeachment.
The House first tried to urge Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to intervene, passing a resolution Tuesday night calling for them to invoke the 25th amendment to the constitution to remove Trump from office. The resolution urged Pence to “declare what is clear to a horrified nation: that the president is incapable of successfully carrying out the duties and powers of his office.”
Pence made it clear that he would not do that by saying in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that it was “time to unite our country as we prepare for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.”
The debate over the resolution was intense after lawmakers returned the Capitol for the first time since the siege.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, argued that Trump should go because, as she put it in Spanish, he is “loco” – crazy.
In opposition, Republican Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio said the “cancellation culture” was only trying to cancel the president. He said the Democrats had been trying to roll back the 2016 election since Trump took office and similarly finished his term in office.
While House Republican leaders allow ordinary lawmakers to vote their conscience on impeachment, it is far from clear that it would take two-thirds of the votes in the equally divided Senate to condemn and remove Trump. Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska this weekend, calling on Trump to “get out as soon as possible.”
With just over a week left in Trump’s tenure, the FBI warned ominously of possible armed protests by Trump loyalists prior to Biden’s inauguration. Capitol Police urged lawmakers to be alert.
With new security, lawmakers had to pass through metal detectors to enter the room of the house, not far from where the Capitol police had barricaded the door against the rioters with their weapons drawn. Some Republican lawmakers complained about the screening.
Biden has said it is important to make sure that “the people who engaged in sedition and endangered life, violated public property, wreaked havoc – that they are held accountable.”
To allay concerns that an impeachment process would bog down his early days in office, the president-elect is encouraging senators to divide their time between recording his priorities, confirming his nominees, and approving COVID-19 aid while he also directs the process.
The impeachment law is based on Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat against Biden. Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, an ally of Trump, has said there was no sign of widespread fraud.
Like the resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment, the impeachment bill also details Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to ‘find’ him more votes and his White House rally to ‘like hell to fight ”by going to the Capitol.
While some have questioned the impeachment of the president so close to the end of his term, there is precedent. In 1876, during the reign of Ulysses Grant, War Secretary William Belknap was deposed by the House on the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.
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Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected to show that Trump’s first impeachment was in 2019, not last year.