House Impeaches President Trump for ‘Incitement of Insurrection’; Ten Republicans Join Democrats’ Vote

Jan. 13 , 2021 (EIRNS)—In a vote of 232-197, the House of Representatives this afternoon voted to impeach President Donald Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection,” related to the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol building as a Joint Session of Congress was meeting to debate election certification. This is the second time in his four-year term that Trump has been impeached on trumped-up charges, the first time at the end of 2019, when he was charged with “abuse of power” for phoning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and allegedly pressuring him to help investigate the Burisma company for which Joe Biden’s son Hunter worked. The Senate refused to convict him at that time.

In the midst of very tight security—there was a heavy National Guard deployment inside the Capitol, and streets in the area were closed, with a large police presence—the House debated Resolution 24 proposed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including one article of impeachment accusing Trump of “willful incitement for insurrection” and saying he “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government.” The article charges that Trump “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol.” Other charges claim that prior to the Jan. 6 Joint Session of Congress, President Trump “repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were fraudulent and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by state or federal officials.” Therefore, the resolution states, his statements about fraud made near the White House “encouraged and foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol.” Notably, the last item in House Res. 24 states that with this impeachment, Trump will be disqualified from holding any U.S. office.

Ten Republicans voted with the Democrats for impeachment, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, head of the Republican Conference until she resigned later today, who proclaimed this morning she would vote for impeachment because “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President ... the President of the United States summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

A particularly insightful statement was made by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who pointed out that exactly 19 minutes after Donald Trump took office in January of 2017, the Washington Post announced that the “impeachment of Donald Trump has begun.” From then on, he said, it was always about “cancelling the President.” The attack on the First Amendment has to stop, Jordan warned. If this continues, he admonished, it won’t just be the Democrats and Republicans they go after. “The cancel culture will come for us all.”

Following the House vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was said to be pleased that Trump was impeached, rejected Democratic calls to immediately reconvene the Senate to hold a speedy trial and convict the President. In a statement issued after the House vote, he said that, “given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week.” McConnell has not indicated whether he will vote to convict Trump in the trial. The Senate isn’t scheduled to reconvene until Jan. 19.