Trump impeached after Capitol riot in historic second charge

President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a historic second time, charged with “incitement of insurrection” over the deadly mob siege of the U.S. Capitol in a swift and stunning collapse of his final days in office.
With the Capitol secured by armed
National Guard troops inside and out, the House voted 232-197 on Wednesday to
impeach Trump. The proceedings moved at lightning s
peed, with lawmakers voting just
one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol, egged on by the
president’s calls for them to “fight like hell” against the election results.
Ten Republicans fled Trump, joining
Democrats who said he needed to be held accountable and warned ominously of a “clear
and present danger” if Congress should leave him unchecked before Democrat Joe
Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20.
Trump is the only U.S. president to
be twice impeached. It was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in
modern times, more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998.
The Capitol insurrection stunned
and angered lawmakers, who were sent scrambling for safety as the mob
descended, and it revealed the fragility of the nation’s history of peaceful
transfers of power. The riot also forced a reckoning among some Republicans,
who have stood by Trump throughout his presidency and largely allowed him to
spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked
Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, imploring lawmakers to uphold their oath to
defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign “and domestic.”
She said of Trump: “He must go, he
is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”
Holed up at the White House,
watching the proceedings on TV, Trump later released a video statement in which
he made no mention at all of the impeachment but appealed to his supporters to
refrain from any further violence or disruption of Biden’s inauguration.
“Like all of you, I was shocked and
deeply saddened by the calamity at the Capitol last week,” he said, his first
condemnation of the attack. He appealed for unity “to move forward” and said,
“Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement
stands for. ... No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law
enforcement.”
Trump was first impeached by the
House in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate voted in 2020
acquit. He is the first president to be impeached twice. None has been
convicted by the Senate, but Republicans said Wednesday that could change in
the rapidly shifting political environment as officeholders, donors, big
business and others peel away from the defeated president.
Biden said in a statement after the
vote that it was his hope the Senate leadership “will find a way to deal with
their Constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the
other urgent business of this nation.”
The soonest Republican Senate
leader Mitch McConnell would start an impeachment trial is next Tuesday, the
day before Trump is already set to leave the White House, McConnell’s office
said. The legislation is also intended to prevent Trump from ever running
again.
McConnell believes Trump committed
impeachable offenses and considers the Democrats’ impeachment drive an
opportunity to reduce the divisive, chaotic president’s hold on the GOP, a
Republican strategist told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
McConnell told major donors over
the weekend that he was through with Trump, said the strategist, who demanded
anonymity to describe McConnell’s conversations.
In a note to colleagues Wednesday,
McConnell said he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote.”
Unlike his first time, Trump faces
this impeachment as a weakened leader, having lost his own reelection as well
as the Senate Republican majority.
Even Trump ally Kevin McCarthy, the
House Republican leader, shifted his position and said Wednesday the president
bears responsibility for the horrifying day at the Capitol.
In making a case for the “high
crimes and misdemeanors” demanded in the Constitution, the four-page
impeachment resolution approved Wednesday relies on Trump’s own incendiary
rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, including
at a rally near the White House on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
A Capitol Police officer died from
injuries suffered in the riot, and police shot and killed a woman during the
siege. Three other people died in what authorities said were medical
emergencies. The riot delayed the tally of Electoral College votes that was the
last step in finalizing Biden’s victory.
Ten Republican lawmakers, including
third-ranking House GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming, voted to impeach Trump,
cleaving the Republican leadership, and the party itself.
Cheney, whose father is the former
Republican vice president, said of Trump’s actions summoning the mob that
“there has never been a greater betrayal by a President” of his office.
Trump was said to be livid with
perceived disloyalty from McConnell and Cheney.
With the team around Trump hollowed
out and his Twitter account silenced by the social media company, the president
was deeply frustrated that he could not hit back, according to White House
officials and Republicans close to the West Wing who weren’t authorized to
speak publicly about private conversations.
From the White House, Trump leaned
on Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to push Republican senators to resist,
while chief of staff Mark Meadows called some of his former colleagues on
Capitol Hill.
The president’s sturdy popularity
with the GOP lawmakers’ constituents still had some sway, and most House
Republicans voted not to impeach.
Security was exceptionally tight at
the Capitol, with tall fences around the complex. Metal-detector screenings
were required for lawmakers entering the House chamber, where a week earlier
lawmakers huddled inside as police, guns drawn, barricaded the door from
rioters.
“We are debating this
historic measure at a crime scene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.
During the debate, some Republicans
repeated the falsehoods spread by Trump about the election and argued that the
president has been treated unfairly by Democrats from the day he took office.
Other Republicans argued the
impeachment was a rushed sham and complained about a double standard applied to
his supporters but not to the liberal left. Some simply appealed for the nation
to move on.
Rep. Tom McClintock of California
said, “Every movement has a lunatic fringe.”
Yet Democratic Rep. Jason Crow,
D-Colo. and others recounted the harrowing day as rioters pounded on the
chamber door trying to break in. Some called it a “coup” attempt.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.,
contended that Trump was “capable of starting a civil war.”
Conviction and removal of Trump
would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which will be evenly divided.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
over the weekend in calling for Trump to “go away as soon as possible.”
Fending off concerns that an impeachment trial would bog down his first days in office, Biden is encouraging senators to divide their time between taking taking up his priorities of confirming his nominees and approving COVID-19 relief while also conducting the trial.
The impeachment bill draws from
Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat to Biden. Judges across
the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases
challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, a
Trump ally, has said there was no sign of widespread fraud.
The House had first tried to
persuade Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke their authority
under the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Pence declined to do so,
but the House passed the resolution anyway.
The impeachment bill also details
Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” him more votes.
While some have questioned impeaching the president so close to the end of his term, there is precedent. In 1876, during the Ulysses Grant administration, War Secretary William Belknap was impeached by the House the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.