Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee urged Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office.
The group of Democrats sent a letter to the vice president on Wednesday night, hours after thousands of protesters stormed the Capitol building.
“The world watched aghast as insurrectionists, who had been egged on by the President, threatened the safety of elected officials and staff and destroyed public property as they stormed and occupied both the House and Senate chambers bringing our democracy to a halt,” they said.
Trump addressed a rally of thousands of supporters earlier in the day. In it, he criticized Republican congressional leaders for not backing his efforts to subvert the Electoral College, which Congress was supposed to certify on Wednesday afternoon.
The president also urged his supporters to go to the Capitol to express their discontent about the election to members of Congress, and he even said he’d go with them, although he ended up going back to the White House. Thousands at the rally then traveled to the Capitol and stormed inside, and there were some physical altercations with law enforcement officers.
Trump later released a video telling his supporters to “go home,” but he also repeated false claims that the presidential election was stolen from him.
“Even in his video announcement this afternoon, President Trump revealed that he is not mentally sound and is still unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election. President Trump’s willingness to incite violence and social unrest to overturn the election results by force clearly meet this standard,” the letter continued.
Police had to evacuate surrounding Capitol office buildings, including the Cannon and Madison office buildings, and the Library of Congress amid the threat. One woman was shot and killed. While these lawmakers are looking to get Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, Rep. Ilhan Omar said she was writing up articles of impeachment.
