Trump faces shameful prospect of second impeachment with Democrats set to move quickly this week
(CNN)Donald Trump is facing the shameful, imminent prospect of becoming the first president to be impeached twice as Democrats warn he poses an unacceptable danger to the world after inciting a mob assault on Congress.
With Washington still in deep trauma as horrific new details emerge from last week's outrage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Democrats will first implore Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare the President unable to fulfill his duties. If, as expected, Pence and the Cabinet balk at that step, Democrats will again unleash the inexorable machinery of impeachment less than a year after Trump's previous acquittal of high crimes and misdemeanors in a Senate trial.
But the compressed calendar as Trump enters his last nine days in office -- and the reticence of Republicans in the Senate, who are faced one again with a loyalty test they have always failed when choosing between Trump's base and the Constitution -- seems certain to thwart Democratic efforts to quickly eject Trump from power. This means the drama surrounding Trump's fate, and the possibility of another Senate trial, could outlast his presidency and his turbulent term could cast a toxic shadow over President-elect Joe Biden's first days in office.
The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is
The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is
The aftershocks of the breaching of the US Capitol are being exacerbated by disturbing new accounts and footage of alarming scenes inside the insurrection that suggested an even worse tragedy was only narrowly averted.
But it was also an eerily quiet weekend. For the first time in years, Americans were spared the extreme rhetoric and tantrums of Trump's Twitter feed after the social media platform muzzled the President over fears of more violence.
As he begins his last full week in office, Trump is scheming to reclaim his megaphone with plans for a trip to visit his border wall — a concept that was one of the earliest precursors of his divisive presidency. The White House is also readying a new attempt to rein in big social media firms that have purged Trump after his inflammatory posts. And Trump is expected to unleash new and controversial pardons that may further test the rule of law before his time is up.
Pelosi: Trump is an 'imminent threat'
Critical mass is building in the House behind the Democratic drive to impeach Trump over his extraordinary assault on the US political system last week.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to seek unanimous consent Monday morning for a resolution calling on Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to declare Trump is no longer fit to carry out his duties.
In the almost certain event the gambit fails, she will call the House back for a full vote on Tuesday. Should Pence not act within 24 hours, Democrats will embark on the historic path towards a second impeachment.
Trump's final days put the country at a dangerous crossroad
Trump's final days put the country at a dangerous crossroad
"In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both," Pelosi said in a letter to her Democratic 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."
Democrats are justifying the unprecedented push for a second impeachment on the grounds that after his most flagrant abuse of power yet, Trump presents a stark danger to the country and the world and must be removed immediately. Another motivating factor is that a conviction in a Senate trial would likely bar Trump from ever seeking public office again. They parry critiques that such a late-term impeachment would be academic by arguing that Trump's crime against the Constitution cannot go unpunished.
Fears Biden's first days in office will be bogged down
But the complications of the timeline threaten to undercut the impeachment push. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a memo that the unlikelihood of securing unanimous consent to break a Senate recess meant that, practically, the earliest date a Senate trial could begin would be January 20, the day Biden takes the oath of office and control of the chamber will switch after Democrats won to Georgia runoffs last week.
While it may seem strange that Senate rules would take precedence over a moment of rare national peril, this would mean Democrats would spend the start of a new presidency burning days or even weeks seeking to convict a President who has already left office. That scenario would not only complicate Biden's hopes of quickly turning Trump's poisoned page in US history, it would slow a desperately needed economic relief package and an effort by the new White House to muster a national fight against a pandemic that is worsening by the hour amid fears of a new more transmissible mutant strain of the coronavirus and the Trump team's misfiring vaccine rollout.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn suggested a workaround for that contingency on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, when he said Pelosi may not immediately transmit one or more articles of impeachment to the Senate to trigger the process of a trial.
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