Vote could take place by midweek • Second Republican senator calls for resignation
By OMRI NAHMIAS, REUTERSU.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center by helicopter after the White House announced that he "will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days" after testing positive for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Bethesda, M(photo credit: REUTERS/JOSHUA ROBERTS/FILE PHOTO)
Articles of impeachment against US President Donald Trump will be presented on Monday at the House of Representatives in response to last week’s violence, despite a pledge by Senate Republicans to avoid the president’s removal.If presented, Trump would be the first US president to be impeached two separate times.“We are now at 195 cosponsors of the Article of Impeachment: Incitement to Insurrection,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California) tweeted on Sunday. “We will introduce the Article tomorrow in the House pro forma session.”However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a Republican, made it clear that the Senate will not return to session before January 19, all but guaranteeing that the Senate will not vote to remove the president from office before the end of his term on January 20.Should Trump be impeached this week, the House could wait as long as 100 days to send the impeachment articles to the Senate and avoid delaying US President-elect Joe Biden’s most urgent agenda items, such as confirming his cabinet nominees during his first days in office, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina) said.“We’ll take the vote that we should take in the House, and [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] will make the determination as to when is the best time to get that vote and get the managers appointed and move that legislation over to the Senate,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union.“It just so happens that if it didn’t go over there for 100 days, it could,” Clyburn said. “Let’s give President-elect Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running, and maybe we’ll send the articles sometime after that.”Meanwhile, a second Republican senator, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, said Trump should step down.“The best way for our country [is] for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I acknowledge that may not be likely, but that would be best.”It is unrealistic that the cabinet would invoke the 25th Amendment or that there was enough time for the impeachment process before January 20, Toomey said.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the first Republican senator to call for Trump’s resignation.However, it was unclear whether a significant number of other Republicans would follow suit. Republican leaders have urged the Democratic-led House not to initiate impeachment proceedings for a historic second time against Trump.Vice President Mike Pence has opposed the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment, an adviser told Reuters.Trump, whose challenges against the validity of Biden’s November 3 presidential victory have been dismissed, praised and egged on his supporters before they laid siege to the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying the Electoral College vote for Biden.THE RIOT on Capitol Hill last week could end up being a super-spreader event, experts told ABC News on Sunday. The attending physician to House members has advised lawmakers to get tested for COVID-19 due to possible exposure during the siege on the Capitol, ABC reported.“On Wednesday, January 6, many members of the House community were in protective isolation in (a) room located in a large committee hearing space,” Dr. Brian P. Monahan wrote, according to CNN. “The time in this room was several hours for some and briefer for others. During this time, individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection,”Federal agents arrested two more Capitol Hill rioters whose images had gone viral, of one carrying off the House speaker’s lectern and another who wore horns and a fur pelt, while a top Democratic lawmaker called on mobile carriers to preserve social-media content related to the carnage.Dozens of people have been charged following the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday. The FBI is asking the public to help identify participants, given the proliferation of images of the riots on the Internet.Jacob Anthony Chansley, who featured prominently on social media wearing horns, a fur pelt, face paint and brandishing a spear adorned with the US flag, turned himself in to the police, the Department of Justice said.Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, called the FBI’s Washington office on Thursday and later told agents “he came as part of a group effort with other ‘patriots’ from Arizona, at the request of the President that all ‘patriots’ come to D.C. on January 6,” the DOJ said in a release.Federal agents also arrested Adam Christian Johnson, whose photo as he smiled and waved as he carried off Pelosi’s lectern also went viral. Johnson, of Parrish, Florida, streamed live video on Facebook of himself as he walked the halls of the Capitol, the Tampa Bay Times reported.The video has been removed from online platforms, and all of Johnson’s pages have been taken down.On Saturday, Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who is the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote to the chief executives of 11 mobile carriers and social-media companies, urging them to preserve content and associated metadata connected to the riot.APPLE INC. and Amazon.com suspended Parler from their respective App Store and Web hosting service, saying the social-networking service popular with many right-leaning social-media users has not taken adequate measures to prevent the spread of posts inciting violence.The action by Apple and Amazon follows a similar move by Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Friday. Parler is favored by many supporters of Trump, who was permanently suspended from Twitter on Friday, and it is seen as a haven for people expelled from Twitter.“We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” Apple said in a statement Saturday.Apple had given Parler 24 hours to submit a detailed moderation plan, pointing to participants’ using the service to coordinate Wednesday’s siege of the US Capitol.Amazon’s move effectively takes the site off-line unless it can find a new company to host its services.Amazon suspended Parler from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit for violating AWS’s terms of services by failing to effectively deal with a steady increase in violent content, according to an email by an AWS Trust and Safety team to Parler that was seen by Reuters.An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the letter was authentic.Due to the “very real risk to public safety” that Parler poses, AWS plans to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, at 11:59 p.m. PST, the email seen by Reuters showed.Parler CEO John Matze lashed out at Amazon, Google and Apple, saying it was a coordinated effort, knowing Parler’s options would be limited and it would inflict the most damage just as Trump was banned from other social-media platforms.“There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on Internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch,” he said in a post on Parler. “This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place... You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.”
