World

House Sets Impeachment Vote to Charge Trump With Incitement

Published

4 years ago

January 12, 2021

WASHINGTON — House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump on Monday for his role in inflaming a mob that attacked the Capitol, scheduling a Wednesday vote to charge the president with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” if Vice President Mike Pence refused to strip him of power first.

Moving with exceptional speed, top House leaders began summoning lawmakers still stunned by the attack back to Washington, promising the protection of National Guard troops and Federal Air Marshal escorts after last week’s stunning security failure. Their return set up a high-stakes 24-hour standoff between two branches of government.

As the impeachment drive proceeded, federal law enforcement authorities accelerated efforts to fortify the Capitol ahead of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s inauguration on Jan. 20. The authorities announced plans to deploy up to 15,000 National Guard troops and set up a multilayered buffer zone with checkpoints around the building by Wednesday, just as lawmakers are to debate and vote on impeaching Mr. Trump.

Federal authorities also said they were bracing for a wave of armed protests in all 50 state capitals and Washington in the days leading up to the inauguration.

“I’m not afraid of taking the oath outside,” Mr. Biden said Monday, referring to a swearing-in scheduled to take place on a platform on the west side of the Capitol, in the very spot where rioters marauded last week, beating police officers and vandalizing the building.

Mr. Biden signaled more clearly than before that he would not stand in the way of the impeachment proceeding, telling reporters in Newark, Del., that his primary focus was trying to minimize the effect an all-consuming trial in the Senate might have on his first days in office.

He said he had consulted with lawmakers about the possibility they could “bifurcate” the proceedings in the Senate, such that half of each day would be spent on the trial and half on the confirmation of his cabinet and other nominees.

In the House, a vote was scheduled for Tuesday evening to first formally call on Mr. Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment. Republicans had objected on Monday to unanimously passing the resolution, which asked the vice president to declare “president Donald J. Trump incapable of executing the duties of his office and to immediately exercise powers as acting president.”

The House is slated to begin debate on the impeachment resolution on Wednesday morning, marching toward a vote late in the day unless Mr. Pence intervenes beforehand.

“The president’s threat to America is urgent, and so too will be our action,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said, outlining a timetable that will most likely leave Mr. Trump impeached one week to the day after he encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol as lawmakers met to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory.

Mr. Trump met with the vice president on Monday for about an hour in the Oval Office, the first time since their falling out last week over the president’s effort to overturn the election and the mob assault on the Capitol that also put Mr. Pence in danger. A Trump administration official who declined to be identified speaking about the delicate situation said the two had “a good conversation” but would not say whether the issue of the 25th Amendment came up.

The vice president had already indicated that he was unlikely to act to force the president aside, and no one in either party expected Mr. Trump to step down. With that in mind, Democrats had already begun preparing a lengthier impeachment report documenting the president’s actions and the destruction that followed to accompany their charge.

They were confident they had the votes to make Mr. Trump the first president ever to be impeached twice.

The impeachment article invoked the 14th Amendment, the post-Civil War-era addition to the Constitution that prohibits anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding future office. Lawmakers also cited specific language from Mr. Trump’s speech last Wednesday riling up the crowd, quoting him saying, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

The Republican Party was fracturing over the coming debate, as some agreed with Democrats that Mr. Trump should be removed and many others were standing behind the president and his legions of loyal voters. They were also fighting among themselves, with many Republicans furious over what took place a week ago and blaming their own colleagues and leaders for having contributed to the combustible atmosphere that allowed a pro-Trump rally to morph into a deadly siege.

Unlike Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019, few Republicans were willing to muster a defense of Mr. Trump’s actions, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, privately told his conference that the president deserved some blame for the violence, according to two people familiar with his remarks. Mr. McCarthy remained personally opposed to impeachment and tried to hold his conference together during a lengthy call on Monday afternoon.

But as many as a dozen Republicans were said to be considering joining Democrats to impeach, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican.

“It’s something we’re strongly considering at this point,” said Representative Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican from Michigan, told a Fox affiliate in his home state. “I think what we saw on Wednesday left the president unfit for office.”

Mr. Trump gave his party little direction or reason to rally around him. Ensconced at the White House and barred from Twitter, he offered no defense of himself or the armed assailants who overtook the Capitol, endangering the lives of congressional leaders, their staffs and his own vice president.

Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, became the latest cabinet official to resign in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, stepping down just nine days before he was expected to help coordinate the security at the inauguration.

If Mr. Trump is impeached by the House, which now seems virtually certain, he would then face trial in the Senate, which requires all senators be in the chamber while the charges are being considered. Democrats had briefly considered trying to delay an impeachment trial until the spring, to buy Mr. Biden more time without the cloud of such a proceeding hanging over the start of his presidency, but by late Monday, most felt they could not justify such a swift impeachment and then justify a delay.

Still, the timing of a trial remained unclear because the Senate was not currently in session. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat, was considering trying to use emergency procedures to force the chamber back before Jan. 20, a senior Democratic aide said, but doing so would take the consent of his Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

House leaders said the timing and outcome of any Senate trial was secondary to their sense of urgency to charge Mr. Trump with crimes against the country.

“Whether impeachment can pass the United States Senate is not the issue,” Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, told reporters. “The issue is, we have a president who most of us believe participated in encouraging an insurrection and attack on this building, and on democracy and trying to subvert the counting of the presidential ballot.”

Representative Tom Reed, Republican of New York, said House Republicans would introduce a measure on Tuesday to censure Mr. Trump and “ensure accountability occurs without delay for the events of Jan. 6.”

Writing in an Op-Ed article published Monday night by The New York Times, Mr. Reed added, “We must also look at alternatives that could allow Congress to bar Mr. Trump from holding federal office in the future.”

Other accountability efforts were underway in the shadow of the drive to punish Mr. Trump. Law enforcement fanned out across the country to track down and arrest members of the mob and heavily fortified the Capitol, where National Guard troops clad in camouflage uniforms roamed the ornate corridors and patrolled the sidewalks outside.

Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio said the Capitol Police were investigating roughly a dozen of their own officers and had suspended two for potentially aiding the insurrectionists. One took selfies with those laying waste to the Capitol; another donned a “Make America Great Again” cap and potentially gave them directions, Mr. Ryan said.

“Any incidents of Capitol Police facilitating or being part of what happened, we need to know that,” he said.

Progressive lawmakers called for investigations and possible expulsions of Republicans who had supported Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the election and helped stoke the violence. More moderate Democrats discussed plans to try to ostracize them going forward — including by refusing to sign onto their legislative efforts or routine requests — because they were likely to remain in Congress. Republicans stoking the bogus claims of election theft themselves were mostly unapologetic and insisted their actions had nothing to do with the violence done in Mr. Trump’s name.

The four-page impeachment article charges Mr. Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States” when he sowed false claims about election fraud and encouraged his supporters at a rally outside the White House to take extraordinary measures to stop the counting of electoral votes underway at the Capitol. A short time later, rioters mobbed the building, ransacking the seat of American government and killing a Capitol Police officer. (At least four others died as a result of injuries or medical emergencies on Capitol grounds.)

“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government,” the article read. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government. He thereby betrayed his trust as president, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”

Modern presidential impeachments have been drawn-out affairs, allowing lawmakers to collect evidence, hone arguments and hear the president’s defense over the course of months. When the Democratic-led House impeached Mr. Trump the first time, it took nearly three months, conducting dozens of witness interviews, compiling hundreds of pages of documents and producing a detailed case in a written report running 300 pages.

It appeared this time that the House planned to do so in less than a week, with little more evidence than the fast accumulating public record of cellphone videos, photographs, police and journalistic accounts, and the words of Mr. Trump himself.

“To those who would say, ‘Why do it now, there are only nine days left the president’s term?’” said Joe Neguse of Colorado, who has been drafting messaging guidance for the party. “I would say, ‘There are nine days in the president’s term.’”

Mr. Trump’s most outspoken defenders opposed impeachment, though most did not explicitly defend his conduct. Many of them who just last week backed his drive to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory and voted to toss out legitimate results from key battleground states, argued that to impeach the president now would only further divide the country.

In a letter to colleagues, Mr. McCarthy wrote that impeachment would “have the opposite effect of bringing our country together when we need to get America back on a path towards unity and civility.” He tried to point Republicans toward possible alternatives, including censure, a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, changing the law that governs the electoral counting process that rioters disrupted and electoral integrity legislation.

“Please know I share your anger and your pain,” he wrote. “Zip ties were found on staff desks in my office. Windows were smashed in. Property was stolen. Those images will never leave us — and I thank our men and women in law enforcement who continue to protect us and are working to bring the sick individuals who perpetrated these attacks to justice.”

Some moderate Democrats were growing uneasy about the implications of such fast and punitive action, fearful both of the consequences for Mr. Biden’s agenda during his first days in office and of further igniting violence across the country among Mr. Trump’s most extreme supporters. They tried to cobble together support for a bipartisan censure resolution instead, but it appeared it might be too late to stop the momentum in favor of impeachment.

Ms. Pelosi shut the idea down during her private call with Democrats, saying that censure “would be an abdication of our responsibility,” according to an official familiar with her remarks.

Credit: NYTimes

World

Trump Makes Victory Speech

Published

2 months ago

November 6, 2024

NewTimes

Trump Protests As FBI Search Divides Republicans, Democrats

By John Michael Ojo

Following his victory at the keenly contested November 5 general elections, Donald Trump, a former President of the United States has declared that he will fight for America every single day of his life.

Trump made the statement while addressing his supporters after Fox News projected him to win the country’s presidential election.

The former Republican President had earlier won Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, key battleground States for the 2024 presidential election.

“I will fight for you, and every single day, I will be fighting for you and with every breath, with my body.

“I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America than what we have.

“It’s victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again,” he said

World

Elon Musk Reveals What’ll Happen If Trump Loses Election

Published

3 months ago

September 30, 2024

NewTimes

Nigeria Approves Elon Musk's Starlink As Internet Service Provider

By John Michael Ojo

As citizens in America prepare to elect their 47th president on the 5th of November, Elon Musk an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, has called on Americans to elect the former US President in order to preserve democracy in the country.

Musk who alleged that democracy in the US would be ‘over’ if Trump fails to secure the desired vote to return him to the White House, said going by the current immigration policy of the Democrats, nearly 2 millions illegal immigrants would have been eligible to vote at the end of the next four years if 1 in 20 illegal immigrants becomes US citizen within this time frame.

The South African-born tech guru and world’s richest man, posting on his X handle wrote: “Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!

“Let me explain: if even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years.

“The voting margin in the swing states is often less than 20 thousand votes. That means if the “Democratic” Party succeeds, there will be no more swing states!!

“Moreover, the Biden/Harris administration has been flying “asylum seekers”, who are fast-tracked to citizenship, directly into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona. It is a surefire way to win every election.

“America then becomes a one-party state and Democracy is over. The only “elections” will be the Democratic Party primaries. This already happened in California many years ago, following the 1986 amnesty.

“The only thing holding California back from extreme socialism and suffocating government policies is that people can leave California and still remain in America. Once the whole country is controlled by one party, there will be no escape.

“Everywhere in America will be like the nightmare that is downtown San Francisco.”

World

Bangladesh Prime Minister Resigns, Flees As Deadly Anti-government Rallies Grip Nation

Published

5 months ago

August 5, 2024

NewTimes

Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina

The prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, resigned on Monday after
weeks of deadly anti-government demonstrations gripped the South Asian nation.

The announcement from Bangladesh’s army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, came after protesters stormed the official residence of the prime minister in the capital, Dhaka.

Images showed flames billowing from vehicles near Hasina’s house, with police unable to contain throngs of people charging toward the neighborhood. Scenes also emerged of people clambering atop an imposing statue of Hasina’s father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in Dhaka, and carving away at the head with an axe, according to Reuters.

Earlier in the day, the military and police had attacked demonstrators rallying in the area, according to a journalist working for CNN in Dhaka.

Bangladesh bans Jamaat-e-Islami party following violent protests that left more than 200 dead

At least 91 people were killed and hundreds injured on Sunday in clashes between police and protesters demanding the scrapping of quotas for government jobs and the resignation of the prime minister. Opponents say the civil service job quotas are discriminatory.

The death toll on Sunday, which included 13 police officers, was the highest for a single day from any protests in the country’s recent history. The figure surpassed the 67 deaths reported on July 19, when students took to the streets against the quotas, Reuters reported. At least 32 children were killed during protests last month, UNICEF said on Friday.

The widespread unrest – which spilled into the cities of Rajshahi, Barisal and Chittagong among others – prompted the government to impose an indefinite nationwide curfew over the weekend. Meanwhile, human rights groups accused authorities of using excessive force against protesters, a charge the government denies.

The military will form an interim government in the wake of Hasina’s resignation, according to the army chief, who called on students “to maintain peace and help us.”

“Whatever demands you have, we will fulfil and bring back peace to the nation, please help us in this, stay away from violence,” Zaman said on Monday. He added that “the military will not fire at anyone, the police will not fire at anyone, I have given orders.”

The US embassy in Dhaka urged US citizens to “shelter in a safe place,” in new travel guidance issued Monday. Authorities added that US nationals in the capital should consider returning to their home country, amid the “unpredictable and volatile” atmosphere.

The main flight hub in Dhaka, the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, was temporarily closed following Hasina’s resignation, according to the Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) state news agency.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
Just on Sunday, Hasina had accused student protesters of being “terrorists,” attempting to “destabilize the nation,” Reuters reported. “I appeal to our countrymen to suppress these terrorists with a strong hand,” she said.

Earlier this year human rights organizations expressed concern over increased reports of political violence, following a general election that saw Hasina secure a fourth consecutive term in office.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party boycotted the national vote in January, as critics warned Hasina and her government were headed toward a one-party system marred by accusations of authoritarianism.

People reacted with a mixture of jubilation and cynicism following her resignation on Monday.

“Hasina may be gone, but there is still a long road ahead for Bangladesh – until our religious minorities and ethnic minorities are protected and justice comes to them too, the nation is not free,” Khatib Zahin, 28, told CNN.

Another resident, Arifeen Mahmood Khan, said: “Let’s be better, stronger and kinder than we’ve ever been before. Let’s work together to build a better Bangladesh we’ve always dreamed of.”

Police opened fire on protesters in Dhaka earlier in the day, according to a journalist working for CNN, even as security forces have been under scrutiny for unleashing a wave of brutality on demonstrators.

At least four people sustained injuries as protesters were gathering at Dhaka Medical College on Monday, according to the journalist. One of those people was shot in the head.

Protesters told CNN that ⁠the military was blocking Dhaka Medical College Bakshibazar Gate. Police also used tear gas on protesters there, according to a demonstrator on the ground.

Students and protesters at Dhaka University Campus and the Shaheed Minar, a national monument in the capital, were beaten by police as they assembled at these locations.

Protesters there said that the police had attempted to break up the crowd by “brutally beating” them with bamboo sticks and using tear gas.

“Direct open firing took place in Shahbag area 15 minutes ago. We don’t have an estimate of how many were injured. It is still ongoing. Near Motijhil Shantinagar, tear gas has been fired on common people,” one demonstrator told CNN.

Protesters celebrated her resignation on Monday, as nationwide rallies over quotas for government jobs sweep the country.

In other locations across Dhaka, the military has also fired warning shots in the sky and towards protesters.

Video posted on social media and verified by CNN showed security forces launching live rounds into the air near protesters on the N1 highway in Dhaka.

Protesters in Dhaka told CNN that the university campus had been surrounded by armed forces.

. CNN