President-elect Joe Biden and his closest advisers are resigned to the inevitability of President Trump’s second impeachment.
Last week, Biden transition aides said the incoming president would “leave it” to Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to decide whether to invoke the Constitution’s 25th Amendment or impeachment proceedings against Trump after his supporters stormed the Capitol building.
“I think it’s important we get on with the business [of] getting him out of office. The quickest way that that will happen is us being sworn in on the 20th,” Biden said Friday, referring to his inauguration.
Biden has publicly and privately acknowledged Trump should be held to account but has questioned the politics of another impeachment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer haven’t hesitated, however.
Facing pressure from their party’s rank-and-file lawmakers, many of whom were endangered during last week’s Capitol attack, Pelosi and Schumer have initiated Trump’s second impeachment in as many years. If successful, Trump will be the first president in history to be impeached twice during his administration.
And Pelosi’s and Schumer’s plans won’t be stopped by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicating he’s unlikely to reconvene the Senate before Jan. 19. A special Senate session would require consent from all the chamber’s sitting members.
The constitutionality of convicting a president on impeachment articles after his term has expired remains an open legal quandary. Yet House Democrats have pressed on. On Monday, they failed to pass legislation by unanimous consent that urged Pence to gather the Cabinet or a “congressional body,” deem Trump unfit, and remove the presidential powers from him under the 25th Amendment.
Undeterred, after the House considers the bill via a roll-call vote Tuesday, Democrats have signaled they’ll bring an impeachment resolution to the floor Wednesday amid heightened security.
Some House Republicans support the Democrats’ efforts, others are pushing to censure Trump, and more still are against it. Those Republicans say impeachment defeats Biden’s unity rhetoric. Two-thirds of House Republicans last week voted to object to the 2020 election’s results, even after the violence.
The House Democrats’ impeachment article, a four-page resolution introduced Monday, essentially charges Trump with inciting an insurrection. Five people died during last week’s Capitol siege after lawmakers met to certify Biden’s majority of electors.
Quinnipiac University pollsters found in a survey published Monday that a slight majority of respondents believed Trump should be ousted, 52% to 45%. But Biden harbors concerns impeachment will hinder Democrats’ legislative program, including a coronavirus stimulus deal.
Biden told reporters Monday that he spoke with House and Senate allies earlier in the day about how they could juggle their responsibilities if they proceeded with impeachment. He said it was his “hope and expectation” that members could “bifurcate” their duties.
“We go half a day on dealing with the impeachment, and half a day getting my people nominated and confirmed in the Senate, as well as moving on the package,” he said of the proposal.
There is, however, another strategy being discussed.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, an influential Biden adviser, began this weekend floating the idea of postponing the impeachment article’s transmission to the Senate for trial.
“Let’s give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running, and maybe we will send the articles some time after that,” he told CNN Sunday.
Biden measures addressing the economy, infrastructure, climate change, civil rights, immigration, and taxes, for instance, could face Republican resistance, according to Washington University in St. Louis political science professor Steven Smith. Particularly in the Senate, where Democrats won’t have a filibuster-proof majority, he said.
“All of these issues would be complicated by negotiations, talk, and the conduct of a removal trial,” Smith told the Washington Examiner.
For Smith, the argument against dragging out an impeachment trial is that Trump engaged in behavior so egregious it warrants conviction.
“There is a constitutional, democratic process at stake,” he said, before suggesting Trump could be banned from running for federal office again as part of a possible sentence.
Yet, there is a second political factor for Democrats.
“From a narrower partisan perspective, it may be that public patience with the process will fade with time and Democrats suffer political harm unnecessarily by delaying,” Smith said.
University of Missouri School of Law professor Frank Bowman was less diplomatic. He contended that Trump’s “outrageous” election fraud scheme, which culminated in a deadly riot targeting “the heart of American democracy,” should trigger “a serious reckoning.”
Even if impeachment wasn’t pursued, Bowman was of the opinion lawmakers should at least debate “the near-collapse of the American experiment.”
“I think there’s every reason to do it. I think, frankly, the circumstances demand it. And that, you know, short-term political calculations really can’t overcome that,” he said.
Bowman implored the Senate “to walk and chew gum at the same time,” despite the slim chance it’ll notch a supermajority to convict.
“Impeachment is a riveting public spectacle that tends to detract from everything else and certainly, when they got around to a trial, would slow everything down to a crawl for some period of time,” he said.
He added: “I also know that the Democrats have every incentive to move this through expeditiously. And, frankly, if you think about it, so do the Republicans. Does the Republican Party really want to spend weeks and weeks and weeks defending insurrection?”
