Echoing the same warning sounded during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote in the second that the threat posed by a power-mad leader “remains a clear and present danger to the Constitution and our democracy.”
Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor known for taking on Russian organized crime who served as House impeachment counsel, made a similar remark in the context of Ukraine on Dec. 9, 2019.
“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” he said.
Now, the stakes are higher. More of Trump’s loyalists have begun ending their support for the president in the wake of his alleged incitement of an insurrection on Jan. 6, which was underlined by the fact that Nadler chose to end his second report by appealing to the words of Vice President Michael Pence.
“In the words of Vice President Pence, the ‘Presidency belongs to the American people, and to them alone,'” the 50-page impeachment report declares, citing an additional 21 pages of footnotes.
The concluding passage of the report says that Trump is “unfit to remain in office a single day longer”:
President Trump has falsely asserted he won the 2020 presidential election and repeatedly sought to overturn the results of the election. As his efforts failed again and again, President Trump continued a parallel course of conduct that foreseeably resulted in the imminent lawless actions of his supporters, who attacked the Capitol and the Congress. This course of conduct, viewed within the context of his past actions and other attempts to subvert the presidential election, demonstrate that President Trump remains a clear and present danger to the Constitution and our democracy. The House must reject this outrageous attempt to overturn the election and this incitement of violence by a sitting president against his own government. President Trump committed a high Crime and Misdemeanor against the Nation by inciting an insurrection at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. The facts establish that he is unfit to remain in office a single day longer, and warrant the immediate impeachment of President Trump.
The report calls the bloodshed laid at Trump’s feet “indisputable.”
“It is indisputable that the President encouraged—and that his actions foreseeably resulted in—the terrorist attack that occurred,” the introduction to the report states. “This alone would constitute grounds for impeachment. There is no place in our government for any officer, much less a President, who incites armed insurrection to overturn the results of our democratic elections.”
“Even after it became clear that a mob of his supporters had breached the Capitol perimeter and was violently attacking those inside, President Trump failed to take steps to stop the insurrection. While violent insurrectionists occupied parts of the Capitol, President Trump ignored or rejected repeated real-time entreaties from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to appeal to his followers to exit the Capitol. Instead, he continued to encourage his supporters and excoriated the Vice President for not ‘hav[ing] the courage to do what should have been done.'”
By then, authorities had whisked Pence out of the Senate chamber to safety, but Trump continued to vilify him on Twitter to the mob, which erected gallows outside and chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”
Not a single House Republican joined the first impeachment vote, and only Utah Sen. Mitt Romney broke with his party in the Senate at the time.
The report notes that Democrats will find much more company across the aisle after the siege.
“As Senator Susan Collins explained: ‘The president does bear responsibility for working up the crowd and inciting this mob,'” the report quotes the Maine Republican as saying. “Similarly, [Nebraska Republican] Senator [Ben] Sasse has observed: “I think it’s obvious that the president’s conduct wasn’t merely reckless and destructive. It was a flagrant dereliction of his duty to uphold and defend the Constitution.”
The New York Times reported that Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose term as Republican Majority Leader is rapidly expiring with his party losing control of the branch, was reportedly “pleased” that Democrats impeaching the outgoing president.
Read the second impeachment report against Trump below:
[Image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
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