Trump "willfully made statements that encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—imminent lawless action at the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with. . .
. . . the Joint Session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts."
His conduct "was consistent with prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election."
2/
"Prior efforts" includes the call to Raffensperger.
In all of this, Trump:
🔹"gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government"
🔹"interfered with the peaceful transition of power"
🔹"imperiled a coordinate branch of government"
3/
Good question. If the House votes on Articles, the Senate will have to reconvene for a trial, or Trump doesn't get a trial, he gets to just stay impeached.
The analogy isn't really a good one, but impeachment is sort of similar to an indictment. . .
. . . followed by a trial where guilt is determined. Being impeached without a trial is sort of like being charged with a crime, but never going to court.
Impeachment requires a majority in the House.
Removal, following a trial, requires 2/3 vote in the Senate . . .
This is also a good question.
In a way, it makes no sense because the real purpose is removal.
But a possible "punishment" as a result of the trial is the inability to hold office again.
Before the storming of the capital, I didn't think there would be an impeachment because the process is generally a long one. You need to question witnesses, gather evidence, etc.
But in this case, the evidence was on national television (thank you, brave journalists). . .
One outcome, particularly with the threat of the 25th Amendment hanging over Trump, is to actually force his resignation as a way to avoid supreme humiliation.
I have never seriously thought anything would get Trump to resign, but much has changed.
Even more so than being removed from office due to mental incompetence?
I'm not a psychologist, but it seems to me that having his own administration go around him on the grounds that he's mentally incompetent would be the ultimate humiliation.
It's much harder to fire a president than a person in a regular because the job itself was obtained through Constitutional procedure (a nationwide vote) but it makes no sense for it to be as hard to remove a president as it is to get a criminal conviction.
Voting earlier on impeachment will not make another riot less likely.
The best situation is for Trump to resign. Pelosi wants to give Trump the chance to resign, or Pence the chance to evoke the 25th.
With the supreme arrogance that comes from too much privilege, it seems to have never occurred to @HawleyMO and @tedcruz that all their lying could expose them to criminal liability.
People who follow me know I've been very resistant to using criminal law. I've often argued that punishment doesn't gain the desired results and that political problems can't be solved through the criminal justice system.
For people wondering a vote might be delayed until Monday, one reason is to allow support to build. Give more newspapers and governors a chance to weigh in. Let people process what happened Wednesday.
The event was so shocking, and shocking details are still coming out.
He had spent so much time among like-minded people who hated Lincoln, and he had read so many accounts denouncing Lincoln as a tyrant bent on destroying the Constitution and "personal liberty" that he expected to be hailed as a hero.
2/
Instead he was stunned to learn that he was being hunted down like a beast, while Lincoln was held up throughout much of the nation as a martyred saint.
Source for this: The bibliography in my biography of Lincoln.
Turley's focus on his own feelings prevents him from seeing his bias. He doesn't see himself as a white supremacist: he just feels a tug of sympathy for what Trump stands for.
"Ethnic majorities rarely give up their power without a fight." Ziblatt and Levitsky.
This explains why they can spend years investigating Benghazi but excuse yesterday.
They had a visceral hatred for Hillary Clinton and a visceral sympathy for Trump.
The best explanation is in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
The current GOP trajectory was in put in place during the Reagan era, but our current problems began with the Supreme Court decision in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, the case that desgregated the schools.