This week President Trump became the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. The charge: incitement of insurrection.
The President stands accused of inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, in an assault that left five people dead. For weeks the President rejected the results of the 2020 election, telling his supporters to stop Congress’ certification.
A recording also captured the president pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state’s certified presidential election results. Security officials and terrorism researchers assert that the President "radicalized" his supporters.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proceeded with impeachment after Vice President Mike Pence declined to remove Trump from power by invoking the 25th Amendment. Before the vote Pelosi declared the President “a clear and present danger to the nation we all love.” The final tally: 232-197.
Ten Republican representatives broke with their party to vote “Yea:” Reps. John Katko, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Dan Newhouse, Peter Meijer, Tom Rice, Anthony Gonzalez, and David Valadao.
Without his social media megaphone, the president has been largely silent through his historic second impeachment. Following the vote, Trump released a video statement disavowing destructive behavior, saying “No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence.” He made no mention of his role inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol, showed no remorse, and did not acknowledge his impeachment.
Trump did, however, take the opportunity to condemn what he called an "unprecedented assault on free speech,” and decried both social media platforms’ decisions to ban accounts and the cancel culture that has hit him and many of his followers for their involvement in the failed coup.
Next, the articles will be delivered to the upper chamber, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear he will not launch an impeachment trial before President-elect Biden is inaugurated. McConnell insists there’s no time – the shortest prior impeachment was President Trump’s first, which took 21 days. President Andrew Johnson’s stretched 83 days, Bill Clinton’s 37 days.
Holding a trial at the beginning of a new administration poses complications of its own: President-elect Joe Biden has expressed wishes that the Senate split its day, handling urgent governance work including confirmations and initial legislation half the day, and the trial in the other.
Also imminent is a change of leadership in the Senate.
Following the swearing in of Georgia’s two new Democratic senators, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will become the majority leader in the Senate. With the Democrats in charge, McConnell is relieved of the responsibility to run the impeachment trial of a member of his own party, which he was forced to do in 2019 for Trump's first impeachment.
To convict the president, a two-thirds majority in the Senate is needed, meaning 17 Republican senators would need to vote to break with their party.
While McConnell has made it clear he will consider the legal arguments presented, no Republican senator has definitively said he or she would vote for conviction, including Mitt Romney, the sole vote for conviction from his party in Trump’s first impeachment.
If the Senate votes to convict, Schumer assured the public that an immediate next step would be taken: “If the president is convicted, there will be a vote on barring him from running again."