NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, January 13th, 2021

Donald Trump has become the first person holding the presidency to be impeached twice

For the sec­ond time in thir­teen months, Don­ald Trump has been impeached for high crimes and mis­de­meanors by the Unit­ed States House of Representatives.

Vot­ing two hun­dred and thir­ty-two to one hun­dred and nine­ty-sev­en, the House agreed to trans­mit a sin­gle new arti­cle of impeach­ment to the Sen­ate. Every Demo­c­rat who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vote backed the arti­cle, along with ten Repub­li­cans who crossed over. Five mem­bers of the House did not vote.

Before today, no Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States had ever been impeached twice, and only two oth­er pres­i­dents had been impeached once (Andrew John­son and Bill Clin­ton; Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached by the House.)

NPI thanks the U.S. House for uphold­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States by impeach­ing Don­ald Trump for a sec­ond time. It had to be done, and it is done.

We are dis­ap­point­ed that only ten House Repub­li­cans found the courage to vote for impeach­ment after Trump incit­ed an attack on the Capitol.

Near­ly two hun­dred oth­er Repub­li­cans chose to stick with Trump despite that, includ­ing top House Repub­li­cans Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise.

For­tu­nate­ly, the Democ­rats held togeth­er and stood for the Constitution.

“We must think on what Lin­coln told us,” House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi told her col­leagues in floor remarks sup­port­ing impeach­ment.

“We, even here – even us here – hold the pow­er and bear the respon­si­bil­i­ty. We, you and I, hold in trust the pow­er that derives most direct­ly from the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, and we bear the respon­si­bil­i­ty to ful­fill that oath that we all swear before God and before one anoth­er: the oath to defend the Con­sti­tu­tion against all ene­mies for­eign and domes­tic, so help us God.”

“We know that we face ene­mies of the Con­sti­tu­tion. We know we expe­ri­enced the insur­rec­tion that vio­lat­ed the sanc­ti­ty of the peo­ple’s Capi­tol and attempt­ed to over­turn the duly record­ed will of the Amer­i­can people. ”

“And we know that the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States incit­ed this insur­rec­tion, this armed rebel­lion, against our com­mon country.”

“He must go. He is a clear and present dan­ger to the nation that we all love. Since the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Novem­ber – an elec­tion the Pres­i­dent lost – he has repeat­ed­ly held about – lied about the out­come, sowed self-serv­ing doubt about democ­ra­cy and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sought to influ­ence state offi­cials to repeal real­i­ty.  And, then, came that day of fire we all experienced.”

“The Pres­i­dent must be impeached, and, I believe, the Pres­i­dent must be con­vict­ed by the Sen­ate, a con­sti­tu­tion­al rem­e­dy that will ensure that the repub­lic will be safe from this man who is so res­olute­ly deter­mined to tear down the things that we hold dear and that hold us together.”

“It is indis­putable that Don­ald Trump incit­ed insur­rec­tion­ists to launch the most dead­ly and destruc­tive assault on the Unit­ed States Capi­tol since the War of 1812,” said U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal in a state­ment fol­low­ing the vote.

“He told these domes­tic ter­ror­ists — many asso­ci­at­ed with white nation­al­ist groups — to ‘stand by.’ Then he urged them to ‘fight like hell.’ Next, he pro­claimed, ‘we are going to the Capitol.’ ”

“The insur­rec­tion­ists fol­lowed these orders from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, and car­ried out a vio­lent attack on our coun­try with the intent of over­tak­ing Con­gress, over­turn­ing this elec­tion and under­min­ing our democracy.”

“We must urgent­ly remove Don­ald Trump from office to pro­tect our coun­try, our Con­sti­tu­tion and our very democ­ra­cy. We must send a clear mes­sage to the Pres­i­dent that the Unit­ed States Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple will not stand by and allow one man to turn our democ­ra­cy into an autoc­ra­cy; that we will not stand by while that man incites insur­rec­tion­ists to launch a dead­ly assault on our coun­try. We must hold him accountable.

“Just over a year ago, I vot­ed to impeach this pres­i­dent. My vote was for the Con­sti­tu­tion and for ‘We, the Peo­ple.’ The threat that Don­ald Trump posed to Amer­i­ca then has only con­tin­ued to escalate.”

“The Sen­ate must imme­di­ate­ly vote to con­vict Don­ald J. Trump for incite­ment of insur­rec­tion and remove him from office.”

“The assault by pro-Trump extrem­ists on Jan­u­ary 6 was not just an attack on the Unit­ed States Capi­tol but an attack on the Unit­ed States and our democ­ra­cy,” said U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith. “After Pres­i­dent Trump and his sup­port­ers spent months spread­ing lies and pro­pa­gan­da about the elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Trump’s sup­port­ers attempt­ed to stage a coup and over­turn the results of our free and fair pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and end our democ­ra­cy as we know it.”

“Every­one involved in this attack must be held account­able, includ­ing the Pres­i­dent. There is no ques­tion that Pres­i­dent Trump incit­ed this vio­lence start­ing with his per­pet­u­al lies about the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, encour­ag­ing his sup­port­ers the morn­ing of the attack, and utter­ly fail­ing to quell vio­lence and respond suf­fi­cient­ly after the attack had begun.”

“From the begin­ning, the lies about the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion stoked by Pres­i­dent Trump and his co-con­spir­a­tors, includ­ing many Repub­li­cans in Con­gress, are not about elec­tion fraud but a brazen attempt to hold onto pow­er by any means nec­es­sary, even at the cost of lives and our democracy.”

“With only sev­en days left in office, Trump has demon­strat­ed he is unfit to remain in office a sin­gle day longer. Incit­ing an insur­rec­tion in an attempt to main­tain pow­er war­rants the imme­di­ate impeach­ment of Pres­i­dent Trump, also ensur­ing his dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion from hold­ing any pub­lic office in the future.”

“All Amer­i­cans who believe in the rule of law and our Con­sti­tu­tion must hold Pres­i­dent Trump account­able for his actions and I urge my Sen­ate col­leagues to con­vict and remove him.”

“A week ago, an armed mob assault­ed the very embod­i­ment of our democ­ra­cy, the U.S. Capi­tol, said U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan DelBene.

“This was more than just an assault on a build­ing. It was an insur­rec­tion per­pe­trat­ed against our gov­ern­ment to stop Con­gress from ful­fill­ing its con­sti­tu­tion­al duty to cer­ti­fy the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion results.

“The sit­ting Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States unde­ni­ably incit­ed the dead­ly events of Jan­u­ary 6. He sum­moned his sup­port­ers and urged them to attack.”

“Dur­ing his ral­ly­ing cry to them ear­li­er in the day, Pres­i­dent Trump false­ly said, ‘we won this elec­tion, and we won it by a land­slide.’ He made state­ments that encour­aged and fore­see­ably result­ed in the law­less assault on the Capi­tol, includ­ing ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a coun­try any­more.’ He lat­er failed to imme­di­ate­ly call on his sup­port­ers to stop the attack.”

“As a result of these vio­lent actions, five Amer­i­cans died and fifty police offi­cers were seri­ous­ly injured, includ­ing fif­teen offi­cers who were hospitalized.”

“Today, with my sup­port, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives passed a bipar­ti­san arti­cle of impeach­ment against Pres­i­dent Trump. He vio­lat­ed his oath of office to pre­serve, pro­tect, and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States. He con­tin­ues to be a dan­ger to our nation­al secu­ri­ty as long as he remains the com­man­der-in-chief. He should be held account­able and barred from hold­ing fed­er­al office in the future.

“Some ask, why do this now, and to that I answer: How can we not?”

“It is crit­i­cal that we hold a pres­i­dent account­able for his dan­ger­ous actions. Inac­tion would be an abdi­ca­tion of Con­gress’ duty and a fail­ure to uphold our oath of office. We must be a coun­try where no one is above the law.”

“Last week Pres­i­dent Trump encour­aged an angry mob of his sup­port­ers to ‘walk down to the Capi­tol’ and ‘…fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a coun­try any­more.’ He fanned the flames, and then when giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask the vio­lent, sedi­tious mob storm­ing the Capi­tol to back off and go home, he said he loved them and con­tin­ued to spread the lies that the elec­tion was rigged and that he won,” added U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schrier.

“The Pres­i­dent is a dan­ger to our coun­try and a threat to our nation­al secu­ri­ty. We had all hoped that Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence would step up and invoke the Twen­ty-Fifth Amend­ment. That would be the most expe­di­tious way to revoke the pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy from Don­ald Trump. Since Vice Pres­i­dent Pence has refused to do this, the House must do its duty and impeach the Pres­i­dent. We can­not allow him to hold this office any longer and endan­ger any more lives. That is why I vot­ed today to impeach Pres­i­dent Trump for incite­ment of insurrection.”

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