Pelosi to Pence: Remove Trump or Democrats will impeach him – again

‘This is an emergency of the highest magnitude,’ speaker says of Trump’s final 13 days

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is prepared to move forward with articles of impeachment against Donald Trump if Vice President Mike Pence does not replace him in the coming days through a process laid out in the Constitution’s 25th Amendment.

“I join the Senate Democratic leader in calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th amendment,” Ms Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday, one day after the building was stormed and ransacked by pro-Trump rioters.

“If the Vice President and Cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment. That is the overwhelming sentiment of my caucus,” she said.

Congress has certified President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, but he doesn’t take office for another 13 days.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has also called for Mr Trump’s immediate removal from office, although he must wait for the House impeachment process to play out before his chamber can take any steps towards ousting Mr Trump.

He told reporters at a press conference in New York on Thursday that he would support Ms Pelosi initiating a fast-track impeachment.

“I don’t trust him one bit,” Mr Schumer said of Mr Trump.

The US Constitution stipulates that the House can impeach a president with a simple majority vote. The president then goes on trial in the 100-member Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required for removal.

Ms Pelosi said that her cell phone has been ringing off the hook with calls for Mr Trump’s ouster after he delivered an inflammatory speech to a crowd of supporters in Washington on Wednesday who subsequently marched to the Capitol, breached police lines, and ran roughshod through the legislature.

Four people died during the mayhem, including one woman who was shot and killed by police outside the doors of the House chamber.

“My phone is exploding with ‘impeach, impeach, impeach,’” the speaker said. “The president must be held accountable.”

Ms Pelosi excoriated Mr Trump as “a very dangerous person who should not continue in office” after Wednesday’s events and his sluggish response to the national security crisis unfolding on Capitol Hill, mere blocks from the White House.

The speaker called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, and other Cabinet members by name imploring them to depose an increasingly deranged and delusional Mr Trump through a provision in the 25th Amendment.

Mr Pence would then become the 46th president of the United States.

“This is urgent. This is an emergency of the highest magnitude,” Ms Pelosi said.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have already begun circulating draft articles of impeachment against the president for inspiring the mob that overtook the Capitol complex on Wednesday, marking the first serious steps towards trying to remove Mr Trump in his final days in office.

Congressmen David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Ted Lieu of California have drafted documents to impeach Mr Trump for “abuse of power”, the same nominal charge levied against him when the House impeached him for the first time in December 2019.

No president in US history has been impeached twice.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is the lead sponsor of the effort to impeach Mr Trump.

“In his conduct of the office of the President of the United States … Donald J. Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States” the Democrats draft impeachment articles state, citing the president’s involvement with a crowd of supporters that eventually overpowered police and burst into the US Capitol to terrorise lawmakers and staff.

Congress had convened in a joint session at the Capitol on Wednesday, 6 January 2021, to count and certify the votes of the Electoral College, the impeachment articles explain.

“Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump addressed a crowd of his political supporters nearby. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.’ He also willfully made statements that encouraged – and foreseeably resulted in – imminent lawless action at the Capitol,” the articles state.

A visibly and audibly angry Ms Pelosi is also calling for accountability among among leaders of the law enforcement agencies that failed to keep the Capitol secure on one of the most funcitonally important days on the political calendar, the day Congress was slated to certify Mr Biden’s electoral victory.

The speaker called for the resignation of US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund following the “failure of leadership” that enabled Congress to be overrun by rioters.

Ms Pelosi commended the valor of the USCP officers on the ground who kept members safe during the siege, but said the institutional failures and lack of coordination and planning with federal agencies were unacceptable.

Mr Sund has not even called congressional leaders since Wednesday’s historic collapse of security at the Capitol complex, Ms Pelsoi said.

The USCP’s notoriously difficult-to-reach media relations department was silent for hours, even after the Capitol complex had been retaken by law enforcement and cleared of all threats.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul D Irving has already submitted his resignation.

Leaders of both parties have expressed alarm at how easily the Capitol was breached, and have called for sweeping investigations into what went wrong and how to prevent such an assault on American democracy in the future.

“Yesterday represented a massive failure of institutions, protocols, and planning that are supposed to protect the first branch of our federal government,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on Thursday.

“A painstaking investigation and thorough review must now take place and significant changes must follow. Initial bipartisan discussions have already begun among committees of oversight and Congressional Leadership,” Mr McConnell said.