House Democrats have enough votes to pass new impeachment resolution against Donald Trump
- The resolution contains a single article of impeachment charging the president with ‘incitement of insurrection’ for his role in the deadly US Capitol attack
- ‘He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government’
US lawmakers formally introduced an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Monday, accusing him of inciting an insurrection against the American government.
The impeachment resolution accuses Trump of inciting his supporters to attack the US Capitol building on Wednesday, in an attempt to stop Vice-President Mike Pence and a joint session of Congress from certifying Trump’s re-election loss to Joe Biden in November.
Politico reported on Monday, citing a congressional aide, that the number of supporters has reached 218 – the minimum needed for the House to send it to the Senate for a trial. If it passes in the House, Trump will become the first US president to be impeached twice.
Trump and his closest backers in the Republican Party had spent weeks inflaming the president’s supporters with false claims that the election had been “stolen” from them, and in a speech shortly before the attack on the Capitol began, Trump told the crowd: “If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country any more”.
“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government,” the article of impeachment says. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government.”
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Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol
Trump, it says, “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”