United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to act quickly and remove Donald Trump from office over his role in last week’s storming of the Capitol.
BBC reports that lawmakers are expected to bring up a resolution asking Mr.Pence to invoke 25th amendment to declare the president unfit for office. Mr Trump could become the only president in US history to have been impeached twice.
Mr Pence is said to opposite the idea.
If he refuses, Democrats will vote to impeach Mr Trump who had urged supporters to march on the Capitol.
Donald Trump is due to leave office on January 20, when Democrat Joe Biden will be sworn in as president. Mr President has said he will not attend Mr Biden’s swearing-in ceremony.
House Democrats have vowed to move quickly with impeachment. To impeach, in this context, means to bring charges in Congress, and Ms Pelosi said Democrats could introduce a charge of “incitement of insurrection” against Mr Trump.
Ms Pelosi wrote to lawmakers saying the House of Representatives would present a resolution on Monday to formally request that Mr Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which would allow Mr Pence to remove Mr Trump from the White House and become acting president.
The House could vote on the resolution on Tuesday. After that, Mr Pence and the cabinet would be given 24 hours to act before the House’s potential move toward impeachment.
“We will act with urgency because this president represents an imminent threat to both,” Ms Pelosi said in her letter on January 10. “The horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.”
The aftershocks of the breaching of the US Capitol still lingers as a deep trauma after new horrific details about the last week’s outrage emerged, suggesting that an even worse tragedy was only narrowly averted.
The Republican President has been accused by Democrats and an increasing number of members of Republicans over the riot. Five people died in the attack, including a Capitol police officer.
Mr Trump is also banned from several social media platforms, including Twitter, on January 8.
