The United States House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached President Donald Trump the second time over the last thirteen months. This second impeachment was as a result of his incitement of the storming of the Congress by his loyalists, leading to the deaths of five people including one police officer.
Democrats accuse the president of encouraging his supporters to attack the Capitol building.
Some in Mr Trump’s Republican party say they will join Democrats to impeach him on Wednesday, formally charging the president with inciting insurrection.
President Trump has rejected any responsibility for the violence.
The riot last Wednesday happened after Mr Trump told supporters at a rally in Washington DC to “fight like hell” against the result of November’s election.
As the House continued its debate, Mr Trump responded to the latest reports of planned protests, urging calm.
“I urge that there must be NO violence, NO lawbreaking and NO vandalism of any kind,” he said in a statement released by the White House.
“That is not what I stand for, and it is not what America stands for.
“I call on ALL Americans to help ease tensions and calm tempers. Thank You.”
The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Donald Trump in connection with his supporters’ violent siege on the US Capitol, with just a week to go until Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th US president. The unprecedented move so close to the end of Mr Trump’s term would make him the first president in US history to be impeached twice, and the only one to be charged with so few days left in office.
Impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives can bring charges against a government official, similar to a grand jury indictment in a criminal court. But it does not result in his automatic ejection from the White House. The US constitution gives the House the “sole power of impeachment” while it is the Senate that has the “sole power to try all impeachments”.
Mr Trump can only be removed from office if he is convicted in a Senate trial. The constitution provides few details on what accounts for an “impeachable offence”, bar one line: “The president, vice-president and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, among others.
Why was Donald Trump Impeached the Second Time?
The article of impeachment that was voted on in the House of Representative charged Mr Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” in relation to last week’s siege on Capitol Hill. The article alleges that Mr Trump “repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud” and cites his fiery speech outside the White House delivered just hours before the angry mob stormed the Capitol.
“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” the president told the crowd in Washington last week before they forced their way into the Capitol in a violent riot that killed at least five people.
Lawmakers also point to Mr Trump’s “prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results” of the November 3 election, including a January 2 phone call in which the president urged Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn the result in the southern US state.
The article of impeachment claims Mr Trump “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government . . . threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperilled a coequal branch of government”. Notably, the article also cites the 14th amendment to the US constitution, which prohibits anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the US from holding “any office”.
In other words, by impeaching Mr Trump, lawmakers are trying not just to eject him from the White House, but also to prevent him from ever occupying it again.
YouTube Suspends President Trump Channel
House and Senate Democrats Call for Trump’s Removal
The Concerning Rise of Trumpism – Part 1
Has any President been Impeached Twice before?
Not at all. President Donald Trump is the first president in the political history of America to be impeached twice.
Infact, just three presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald Trump in December of 2019.
None of them was removed from office, having all been acquitted in Senate trials. But Mr Trump is the first president to be impeached for the second time for high crimes and misdemeanours.
Mr Trump was impeached just over a year ago, in December 2019, on two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Those charges stemmed from his efforts to persuade the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Mr Biden and his son Hunter during an infamous phone call between the two world leaders.
However, Mr Trump was acquitted in February following a Senate trial that saw lawmakers split along political party lines. Two-thirds of the 100-member Senate needs to vote to convict in order for a president to be removed from office. Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to convict Mr Trump on the single charge of abuse of power in February.
What happens next?
The House has now impeached President Donald Trump, and it was an easy feat given the fact that more than 200 Democratic lawmakers co-sponsored the article of impeachment and Democrats control the lower chamber.
Five Republicans, including Liz Cheney, the highest-ranking GOP woman on Capitol Hill, said late on Tuesday they will also vote to impeach the president.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, has not said when she will send the article of impeachment to the Senate for trial.
Last time Ms Nancy Pelosi waited almost a month to hand over the articles. However, she appointed a slate of impeachment managers late on Tuesday, in a move that would allow her to proceed swiftly.
The managers will prosecute the case against Mr Trump during a trial in the upper chamber. Chief among them is Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman from Maryland who also drafted the article of impeachment.
While Republicans currently control the Senate, the balance of power will tip to the Democrats when Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in after last week’s run-off elections in Georgia and Kamala Harris is installed as US vice-president next week.
When will Mr Trump go on trial?
Jim Clyburn, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina and one of Ms Pelosi’s top lieutenants suggested at the weekend that the articles could be withheld until after Mr Biden’s first 100 days in office. That would give the new president time to push through his ambitious legislative agenda, including a multitrillion-dollar stimulus package to boost the pandemic-battered economy, without the shadow of an impeachment trial. But other senior Democrats, including Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer, who will soon be Senate majority leader, have suggested the trial should be held as soon as possible. Mr Schumer on Tuesday cited a measure from 2004 that would allow he and Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, to reconvene the Senate.
Mr Hoyer, Ms Pelosi’s second-in-command, said on Wednesday morning that the article could be sent as soon as this week. Convicting Mr Trump after he has left office would obviously not serve to remove him from the White House, but it could prevent him from being able to run for president or any other public office again.
