The plenary vote in the House of Representatives could be on Wednesday or Thursday
The Democratic Party has presented this Monday the formal request for the opening of impeachment or impeachment against the US President, Donald Trump, for a single article of “incitement to insurrection” for his support for the mobilizations that culminated in the assault on the Capitol by thousands of his supporters on January 6.
The deadlines prevent Trump from being dismissed before Joe Biden will take office on January 20, but they would allow him to disqualify him from holding public office and running for reelection in 2024.
Members of the House of Representatives for the Democratic Party David Cicilline, Ted Lieu and Jamie Raskin subscribe to the request to open the impeachment proceedings against Trump for “willfully inciting violence against the United States Government.”
The motion for urgent processing of the request has been appealed by Republicans, but the impeachment process against Trump is now formally open.
Now the Democrats hope that the Committee on the Rules of Procedure of the House of Representatives must meet this Tuesday to approve a procedural framework for the plenary session of the House to debate an initiative protected by the Twenty-fifth amendment of the Constitution, by which in case of disqualification of the president, the vice president assumes presidential powers.
House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern has indicated that the Committee will likely meet again on Wednesday to approve the rule for the impeachment resolution. The vote in the plenary session of the Chamber will depend on all these procedures, but it could be Wednesday itself or perhaps Thursday. At the moment, one of the promoters of the impeachment, David Cicilline, has assured that 210 of the 435 members of Congress support the initiative.
“THE INTEGRITY OF THE DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM THREATENED”
The text presented maintains that Trump repeated false claims about his supposed victory in the presidential elections of November 3 and harangued his followers in a speech broadcast on January 6 itself.
He also mentions Trump’s phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State to pressure him to “find” a thousand votes for him to turn around the result of the elections in that territory.
“With all this, President Trump seriously endangered the security of the United States and its government institutions,” says the resolution, to which CNN has had early access. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered in the peaceful transition of powers and endangered the balance of power of the Government. Consequently, he betrayed his trust as president to hurt the people of the United States,” he adds.
With this process, Trump will become the first president of the United States to be subjected to two impeachment proceedings after he was acquitted in February 2020 after being accused of abuse of presidential power and obstruction of Congress for pressuring Ukrainian leaders to They will investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden for their business activities.
DISMISSAL PROCESS
The process to judge a president is set out in the Constitution and starts in the House of Representatives, in a first phase in the Justice Commission and then in the plenary session. A simple majority is necessary to start the process, so the Democrats are enough to push the impeachment.
In the history of the United States only three times has the House of Representatives given the trial a ‘green light’ and in all three cases – Andrew Johnson, in 1868; Bill Clinton, in 1998, and Donald Trump himself, in 2019 – the political color of the Lower House was different from that of the White House. Richard Nixon was saved in 1974 from a process in the making by presenting his resignation in the ‘Watergate’ case.
In the event that the House of Representatives endorses the ‘impeachment’, the ball goes to the roof of the Senate, the body to which the political trial corresponds.
At this point, the accused president has only two possible scenarios left: acquittal, as happened to Johnson, Clinton and Trump himself, or dismissal, for which it is necessary that two-thirds of the Senate –67 seats- – vote in favor. The United States has never seen a president fall through this system.
However, the simple majority that Democrats will have once Vice President Kamala Harris takes office would be enough to disqualify Trump from holding public office and thus prevent him from running in the 2024 presidential election.
After the Democratic victories in the last two elections to replace two senators from Georgia, the Upper House is tied at 50 votes for Democrats and Republicans, but the vice president, now Mike Pence and as of January 20, Kamala Harris, has a casting vote as presidents of the Senate.
