If Congress cannot get its act together in time to impeach President Trump for inciting a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol to pressure lawmakers into overturning the election results, then they should take their time and do it right.
That means they should allow time for a full investigation of his actions on the day of the deadly siege, including answering the question of why the National Guard was not allowed to be deployed. A full process would also look closely at his behind the scenes efforts to overturn the results of the election.
There are four basic arguments people have made for impeaching Trump again.
The first is that he needs to be removed from office immediately, because every moment he maintains the power of the presidency, he is a threat to the republic and to global security. But if Democrats wanted to act urgently under the “every second counts” theory, they should have moved swiftly on Thursday to vote to impeach him and send the articles over to the Senate.
Instead, Democrats have been taking their time, trying to talk about the 25th Amendment option that is unlikely to happen, and that ultimately punts to Vice President Mike Pence. Now, the earliest they’d be acting on impeachment would be sometime this week, meaning at most, the Senate would have a matter of days before Trump leaves offices to remove him.
In other words, this first argument likely no longer holds.
The second case in favor of Trump’s impeachment is that in his current position, he could spend the rest of his presidency inciting more mob violence. This I find least compelling. Trump, with or without Twitter, would have plenty of ways to communicate with his followers about theft and fraud and keeping up the fight were he not in office. And were Congress to take the extraordinary step of removing him with just days to go, it would create another “showdown” event and another grievance to supercharge those of his supporters who tend toward violence.
To be clear, I am not saying that Congress should be intimidated by the mob to not take action it otherwise deems appropriate. My point is that one cannot expect impeachment to reduce the opportunity for Trump to incite violence or the motivation for the violent ones among his supporters to carry out more attacks. So violence prevention is not really a convincing argument to do it.
Another argument is that convicting Trump in an impeachment proceeding would bar him from ever holding federal office again. This would certainly be a gift to Republicans, who now have to contemplate the possibility that given his rabid base of support, he could haunt them in the 2022 and 2024 elections. While Trump would be unlikely to win a general election again, he certainly would still be formidable in a GOP primary were he not barred from running. So they could have to wait until 2028 to have another crack at the White House as long as he is in the picture.
While barring him from office is a compelling argument for those of us who would like to see the Republican Party move on from Trump, it doesn’t grapple with the fact that even after the deadly mob attack we saw on Wednesday, there’s a good chance Trump would be the 2024 nominee if he ran. It’s the underlying demand for a Trump figure that really needs to be addressed, and if anything, the impeachment of the most popular Republican among Republican voters would likely only increase the populist rage against the establishment and the sense of betrayal of his supporters. Again, this should not prevent action that would otherwise be justified, but it also does not address the root problem of Trumpism and could actually make it worse.
That brings us to the other, more straightforward, and strongest argument in favor of impeachment. And that is that Trump should be punished for what he did, and we should make sure to send the signal to anybody who would consider acting in a similar manner that there would be severe consequences to doing so.
Given that this would apply whether or not impeachment is concluded before he leaves office, if Congress cannot move quickly enough to remove Trump, it would be better to wait and make sure it is done properly. Creating the precedent for a rapid-fire impeachment could have troubling implications for the future and would raise due process concerns. Again, that might be something you’d be willing to risk to save the country from weeks of his presidency. But if it’s a matter of days, it becomes more questionable.
So if Congress loses the chance for speed, which it likely already has, it would be better if they took their time and did a thorough inquiry of what happened. For instance, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has said members of Congress were desperately calling for the National Guard to be deployed, but it took hours for him to get the approval to send them. A more thorough investigation would look into the role Trump played in this.
But it would not be limited to the assault on the Capitol. An investigation could also look at Trump’s actions in the months leading up to the attacks to overturn the results of the election. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House pressured Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor to resign because he wasn’t doing enough to probe Trump’s unproven election fraud claims.
We also have the audio of Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he tried to intimidate him into finding enough votes for him to win the state.
My guess is that a thorough investigation would probably reveal many other cases of improper and possibly illegal behavior by Trump.
There is a further benefit to waiting. With Trump out of office and thus with limited powers of retribution, people in the know may be more willing to come forward and to provide a full and honest accounting of what happened when they do. Furthermore, with Trump no longer able to deliver any sort of policy wins to them, Republican Senators may be more willing to vote based on the evidence rather than out of pure partisan considerations.
As I’m writing this, I see that House Democrats may already be considering the delayed approach. House Majority Whip James Clyburn said they might wait until after Biden’s first 100 days to deliver articles of impeachment to the Senate.
The bottom line is that if a quick strike is off the table, they may as well take their time and do it right.
