Speaker Nancy Pelosi followed through on her threats to try to force President Donald Trump out of office, one way or another.
The San Francisco Democrat and her top lieutenant tried to shove through a resolution to make Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment. Through that amendment, Pence and a majority of the Cabinet could sideline Trump by seeking congressional support to declare him unfit to handle his duties.
Raising questions about who teeters on the brink of dictatorship, Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland wanted the measure pushed through by unanimous consent. Under congressional rules, the topic of the resolution could be directed to be carried out if no other lawmakers protest.
In this case, however, it died when GOP Rep. Alex Mooney of West Virginia objected.
In a statement, Mooney, who arguably comes from where the bedrock of Trump’s support is thickest, said, “Speaker Pelosi should not attempt to adopt a resolution of this magnitude without any debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.”
“It is wrong to have sent members of Congress home and then try to adopt without any debate a precedent-setting resolution that could imperil our Republic,” Mooney said. “The U.S. House must never adopt a resolution that demands the removal of a duly elected president, without any hearings, debate or recorded votes.”
In her own remarks, Pelosi defended the move. “The president represents an imminent threat to our Constitution, our country and the American people, and he must be removed from office immediately,” she said.
“House Republicans rejected this legislation to protect America, enabling the President’s unhinged, unstable and deranged acts of sedition to continue. Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end.”
Pelosi added, “As our next step, we will move forward with bringing impeachment legislation to the floor. The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action.”
Democratic Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island has already drafted an impeachment resolution, based on the tragic Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the language of which says Trump’s “false claims” about the election and other comments “foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol.”
In part, Cicilline’s resolution says, “Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government.”
“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government. He thereby betrayed his trust as president, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” it adds.
Trump, by such conduct, “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”
House Democrats are thus hellbent on following through to impeach Trump.
Pelosi said the measure Mooney defeated today will come up Tuesday, and if that fails, Cicilline’s will be taken up later in the week.
With 222 Democrats in the House, Pelosi already has the votes necessary to impeach Trump for a second time – a year after the Democrats’ partisan action to try to remove the president last year over his call to the leader of Ukraine in 2019.
Yet Jonathan Turley, a liberal law school professor at George Washington University, has noted that Trump’s comments at a protest rally before the riot did not violate federal law and that Pelosi and her supporters would be essentially impeaching the president for statements protected by the First Amendment.