180 members of the House have cosponsored an article to impeach President Donald Trump in the wake of his efforts to incited a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week.
UPDATE to the update: We’ve just hit 180 cosponsors of the Article of Impeachment drafted by Rep @davidcicilline, @RepRaskin, me and @HouseJudiciary staff.
We will introduce the Article of Impeachment this Monday during the House’s pro forma session. https://t.co/qm7LmXhOgK
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) January 9, 2021
The news of growing House support comes after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced during a news briefing earlier in the week that the House was prepared to pursue impeachment if the Trump did not resign and Vice President Mike Pence and members of the cabinet did not invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office.
During a CNN interview on Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) a member of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the authors of the article of impeachment, echoed Pelosi’s comments, saying that House Democrats “will prefer that Donald Trump simply do the right thing and resign, or that Vice President Pence actually shows some spine, at least for himself and his own family and invoke the 25th amendment.”
Lieu noted that in the absence of action from either Trump or Pence, the House was prepared to launch the effort for a second impeachment of President Trump as early as Monday, adding: “we do expect a floor vote this coming week.”
No president has ever been impeached twice, but there appeared to be widespread enthusiasm among House Democrats for the four-page draft which zeroes in on “incitement of insurrection” as the sole article of impeachment.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had criticized the effort on Friday suggesting it would only sow further division.
But Pelosi told CBS’ Lesley Stahl in a “60 Minutes” interview set to air in full on Sunday that it is sad that “the person that’s running the Executive Branch is a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president.”
Pelosi had previously announced in a letter that she was discussing with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley how to prevent Trump from potentially accessing nuclear codes.
“We’re only a number of days until we can be protected from him,” Pelosi later said in a clip of the Stahl interview. “But he has done something so serious that there should be prosecution against him.”
The Constitution makes it possible for House lawmakers to introduce charges and move quickly to a debate and floor vote in a matter of days. A Senate trial could take place even after Trump leaves office in less than two weeks. If he were convicted, the Senate could vote to prevent him from holding office in the future.
