The House has approved a resolution formally calling on Vice President Mike Pence to enact the 25th Amendment, allowing the majority of a cabinet to remove a president from office if they deem him unfit. The resolution requires Pence to respond within 24 hours, otherwise the House will continue with an indictment against the president.
Before the House voted on the resolution, Pence said in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he would not call for the 25th Amendment. The Vice President said he did not “believe that such an action is in the best interests of our nation or in accordance with our Constitution.”
But some Republicans in Congress are beginning to break the president after a deadly attack on the Capitol last week by a violent crowd of Trump supporters. Five Republicans, including Congressman Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, have said they will vote to accuse Trump.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States and his oath to the Constitution,” Cheney said in a statement Tuesday, accusing the president of inciting violence among his supporters. In a speech during a protest a few hours before rioters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump repeatedly refused to concede, urging Republican lawmakers to try to overthrow the election and urging supporters to “fight like hell.”
The House is expected to proceed on Wednesday with a vote on the indictment. An indictment released in the House on Monday, backed by more than 200 Democrats, accuses Trump of “inciting rebellion” and says he seriously endangered the security of the United States and its government institutions.
A report released by Democrats on Tuesday night on the House Judiciary Committee said the president had “committed a major crime and misconduct against the nation by encouraging an uprising at the Capitol in an effort to to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. ‘
Some Republicans denounced the president but did not want to go so far as to say they would accuse him. A group of six Republicans from the House on Tuesday submitted a resolution in which he called Mr. Trump believes he has an “illegal attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and violate his oath of office” on January 6. be a formal condemnation.
The president refused to accept any responsibility for the deadly assault that left five dead. Trump spoke to reporters on Tuesday, claiming that his speech to supporters before storming the Capitol was “completely appropriate.”