Donald Trump on the path to second impeachment

US Democrats say they will push to remove President Donald Trump from office during the final days of his administration.

Capitol police stand at attention as the casket with fallen police officer Brian Sicknick passes during a funeral procession in Washington on Monday. Picture: AFP

US Democrats said on Monday AEDT they would push to remove President Donald Trump from office during the final days of his administration after his supporters’ attack on the Capitol, with some Republicans supporting the move.

The move came as JPMorgan Chase suspended all US political donations, joining a growing list of corporations holding back funding since the violence.

Mr Trump could face a second impeachment before the January 20 inauguration of Joe Biden, at a time when the US is hit by a surging pandemic, a flagging economy and searing division.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there would be a resolution on Tuesday calling for the cabinet to remove Mr Trump as unfit for office under the 25th amendment. If Vice-President Mike Pence does not agree to invoke the 25th, “we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation” in the House, the top Democrat in congress said.

“As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action,” she said

Mr Trump was already impeached once by the Democrat-controlled House in December 2019 for pressuring the Ukrainian President to dig up political dirt on Mr Biden. He was acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.

Though time is running short, Democrats probably have the votes to impeach Mr Trump again and could draw increased Republican support for the move. But they are unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority needed to convict Mr Trump in the Senate.

Authorities are seeking to arrest more Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Thursday after the President held a rally outside the White House repeating false claims that he had lost the election to Mr Biden due to fraud.

Mr Trump’s immediate resignation “is the best path forward”, Republican senator Pat Toomey told CNN. “That would be a very good outcome.”

Nancy Pelosi says there will be a resolution on Tuesday calling for the cabinet to remove Donald Trump as unfit for office under the 25th amendment. Picture: AFP

Senator Toomey said that since losing the election on November 3, Mr Trump had “descended into a level of madness and engaged in activity that was absolutely unthinkable, and unforgivable”.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the first Republican senator to demand Mr Trump’s resignation, saying: “I want him out.” House Republicans, including Adam Kinzinger, have echoed that call.

The article of impeachment is set to charge Mr Trump with inciting Thursday’s violence, which left five people dead.

Hundreds of off-duty police on Sunday lined Constitution Avenue in Washington and saluted as a hearse rolled slowly by carrying the body of Brian Sicknick, the policeman who died in the attack on the Capitol.

Security has been stepped up, with a 2m high black metal fence erected around the Capitol Building. Extremists have threatened new action in coming days both in Washington and state capitals.

The political action committee at JPMorgan, the country’s largest bank, will stop making any financial contributions to Republican and Democratic leaders for at least six months, a spokesman said.

Mr Trump has gone largely ­silent in recent days. Twitter, his favoured public platform, has banned him for language that could incite violence. He plans to travel to Texas on Wednesday in one of his final trips as president to highlight his claims of building a border wall to keep immigrants from Mexico out of the US.

Senate rules mean the upper chamber would probably be unable to open an impeachment trial before January 19, and Senator Toomey said he was unsure it was constitutionally possible to impeach someone once out of office.

Some Democrats, for their part, have expressed concern that a Senate trial would overshadow and hamper Mr Biden’s efforts to lay out his agenda, starting with the fight against the coronavirus and the need to support the economy. “Let’s give president-elect Biden the 100 days” at the start of his term to deal with the most urgent issues, Democrat House whip James Clyburn told CNN.

“Maybe we’ll send the articles sometime after that.”

But senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat whose vote could be crucial in the new, evenly divided Senate, told CNN that an impeachment after January 20 “doesn’t make any common sense whatsoever”.

AFP