US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi was yesterday set to send the US Senate a single article of impeachment accusing former US president Donald Trump of inciting the US Capitol riot, formally triggering the first-ever impeachment trial of a former US president.
Pelosi, the top Democrat in the US Congress, last week vowed that the trial — already scheduled to open in the second week of next month — should proceed, saying: “I don’t think it will be long, but we must do it.”
However, Republican lawmakers signaled over the weekend that Democrats might struggle to secure Trump’s conviction over the storming of US legislative buildings on Jan. 6, which left five people dead.
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Senior figures in Trump’s party have pushed back with political and constitutional arguments, raising doubts that Democrats — who control 50 seats in the 100-seat chamber — can secure the 17 Republican votes to reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict.
“I think the trial is stupid. I think it’s counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top,” US Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday.
He acknowledged that Trump — who had urged thousands of his supporters to flock to Washington and protest the congressional certification of US President Joe Biden’s victory — “bears some responsibility for what happened.”
However, to “stir it up again” could only hurt the country, said Rubio, a presidential candidate beaten by Trump in the 2016 primary.
Other Republicans have said that the Senate has no authority to put a private citizen — as Trump now is — on trial.
US Senator Mike Rounds told NBC’s Meet the Press that the constitution does not allow for the impeachment of a former president.
However, US Senator Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ 2012 presidential candidate and a frequent Trump critic, told CNN that “the preponderance of legal opinion is that an impeachment trial after a president has left office is constitutional. I believe that’s the case.”
The Utah Republican — the only member of his party to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial — hinted that he might be leaning the same way now.
He said he believed “that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?”
The Capitol riots were documented on videos seen around the world — as were Trump’s earlier exhortations to the crowd to “fight” for his presidency — complicating his defense.
His case might have suffered further after the New York Times on Friday reported that Trump had considered ousting the US acting attorney general in favor of a low-ranking official receptive to his efforts to overturn the election result.
Biden has publicly taken a hands-off approach to the impeachment, eager to put Trump in the rear-view mirror and seek progress on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and reviving a devastated economy.
Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the president “believes that it’s up to the Senate and Congress to determine how they will hold the former president accountable.”
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