- The House of Representatives passed a resolution late Tuesday night demanding that Vice President Mike Pence immediately call for the 25th amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office.
- The vice-president announced hours before the vote that he was not going to do it, because it would set a ‘terrible precedent’ and further ignite the passions of the moment.
- The House will then charge the president with “incitement to insurrection” and is expected to hold a vote on Wednesday.
- Pence and Trump spoke by telephone Monday night – their first conversation since the uprising – and “promised to continue working for the rest of their term on behalf of the country,” a senior official told CNN.
- Trump faces a mountain of political and potential legal problems after inciting a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol last week that resulted in five deaths.
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The House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution late Tuesday night calling on Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump’s cabinet to call for the 25th amendment and remove Trump from office.
The vote was 223-205 in favor of the non-binding resolution.
Maar Pence announced hours before the House agrees that he will reject the attempt and accuse the House of playing ‘political games’. He argued that the call for the 25th amendment would be divisive and set a ‘terrible precedent’ that would further ignite the passions of the moment.
The House will now arrest the president on Wednesday for “inciting rebellion”.
Tuesday’s resolution comes after Trump incited a deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6 as Congress picked up the vote in the 2020 election and prepared to finalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
In their resolution, lawmakers accused Trump of inciting the mob and undermining the Constitution, “repeatedly, consistently and spectacularly proving that he is his absolute inability to fulfill the most basic and fundamental powers and duties of his office.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who helped write the resolution, said the president was “on the road to reconciliation” amid national unrest over the breach of his oath of office. He praised Pence for ratifying the Electoral College last week – which asked Trump to accuse him of a lack of ‘courage’, and urged him to ‘stand up again’.
“Can you imagine any other president in our history encouraging and promoting mob violence against the United States Congress? Against our people? That is the question,” Raskin said Tuesday during a hearing on the House Rule Committee.
“The 25th Amendment poses no risk to me, but will return to Joe Biden.”
Trump refused to accept any responsibility for the deadly siege of the Capitol last week, and told reporters on Tuesday that “everyone” thinks his speech on his loyalists is “completely appropriate.” Trump on Tuesday during a speech in Alamo, Texas, rejected the threat of his removal by the 25th Amendment.
“The 25th amendment does not pose a risk to me, but will come back to Joe Biden and the Biden government – as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for,” he said.
Trump also warned that the attempt to accuse him was “causing great anger and division and pain” and that it was “dangerous for the US, especially at this very soft time”.
—NowThis (@nowthisnews) 12 January 2021
Business Insider reported last week that the vice president, who chaired Congress, is not inclined to take the drastic step of removing the president via the 25th Amendment. On Monday night, he and Trump spoke telephonically for the first time since the riot, promising to continue their work until the end of their tenure, again indicating that Trump will not be removed by his cabinet.
This comes as increasing numbers of Republican lawmakers have announced or suggested they will vote to accuse the president of inciting an uprising. Rep. Liz Cheney, the third highest-ranking Republican in the House, along with GOP representatives John Katko and Adam Kinzinger announced Tuesday night that they support the president’s accusation.
During a rally shortly before Congress last week, the president called on his supporters to march to the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“You will never take back our country with weakness,” he told thousands of people who had gathered to hear him speak. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“We will have to fight much harder,” Trump added before releasing the mob.
The aftermath of the American riots in the Capitol building.
Leah Millis / Reuters
Thousands of Trump supporters stormed US Capitol, searching for lawmakers
The coup attempt resulted in five deaths, including a Capitol police officer who died after Trump supporters beat him with a fire extinguisher. Rioters broke the barriers outside the Capitol, raided the building, ransacked lawmakers’ offices, destroyed property and stole stolen plates that, according to the Justice Department, may have contained “national security shares.”
Pence was quickly evacuated along with senior lawmakers, while other members of Congress hid in their place or behind temporary barriers with Hill staff members and reporters.
Additional footage and media reports that have come out since the riot suggest it could have been much more deadly if lawmakers had not been evacuated in time. A crowd of Trump supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” outside the Capitol, and a Reuters photojournalist said he heard three rioters trying to “hang him on a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor”.
A gallows with a loop was erected outside the building when neo-Nazis and white nationalists supporting the president stormed the Capitol in search of other lawmakers.
One man who has since been arrested sent a text message before the uprising saying he was going to put a bullet in the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, on a live TV. Another was arrested while carrying 11 Molotov cocktails. And several rioters taken down in the Capitol were seen with zippers taking hostages and dressed in tactical uniforms.
After the uprising, it emerged that many members of the mob were active law enforcement officers and former military personnel, and that police departments had since investigated whether members of their forces had participated in the coup attempt.
Pence, in turn, was in the middle of the riot with the president and refused to be evacuated to a safe place outside the Capitol grounds.
“I know Mike Pence forever,” Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe told the Tulsa World newspaper last Wednesday. “I’ve never seen Pence as angry as I do today.”