Pelosi: Democrats will move to impeach Trump
House Democrats will stage a vote to impeach President Trump for encouraging mob violence at the Capitol last Wednesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Sunday night.
Pelosi said the Democrats’ preferred response to the attack on the U.S. Capitol is for Vice President Mike Pence to remove Trump by invoking the 25th Amendment — an unlikely scenario less than two weeks before Trump is set to leave office.
But in a letter to fellow Democrats, the Speaker vowed to bring a vote on impeachment in the absence of action by Pence, setting the stage for an historic first: the impeachment of a president for the second time in his tenure.
“In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both,” Pelosi wrote in the letter to rank-and-file colleagues. “As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.”
The timing of the impeachment vote remains unclear.
Pelosi, who was personally targeted by some members of the pro-Trump mob in Wednesday’s insurrection, laid out the Democrats’ strategy for the days ahead.
On Monday, they will try to adopt Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin’s 25th Amendment resolution by unanimous consent — a gambit sure to be blocked by Trump’s conservative allies.
“If we do not receive Unanimous Consent, this [Raskin] legislation is planned to be brought up on the Floor the following day. We are calling on the Vice President to respond within 24 hours,” Pelosi wrote.
“Next, we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor.”
But the Speaker did not say when the impeachment vote might happen.
And Rep. Jim Clyburn (S.C.), the Democratic whip, suggested earlier Sunday that Democrats could impeach Trump now but delay sending the articles to the Senate, granting incoming President Joe Biden the time to seat his Cabinet and launch his 100-day agenda before an impeachment trial bogs down Congress for an indeterminate length of time.
“We will take the vote that we should take in the House. And [Pelosi] will make the determination as to when is the best time to get that vote and get the managers appointed and move that legislation over to the Senate,” Clyburn told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.
“Let’s give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running,” Clyburn added. “And maybe we will send the articles some time after that.”
Source: Scott Wong and Mike Lillis, thehill.com/homenews/house/533572-pelosi-democrats-will-impeach-trump