President Trump violated his oath preserve, protect, and defend the United States Constitution when he called on a seditious mob to attack the U.S. Capitol as part of a failed attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results. Trump was charged for this on Wednesday, from a 232-197 Vote of the House of Representatives.
A majority of the house recognized the truth of the call from Maryland Democrat Representative Jamie Raskin, who served as the executive manager for the second impeachment, “We have a solemn duty to protect our democracy and constitution.”
But it was nowhere near the unanimous vote that it should have been.
Republican opponents of accountability on Wednesday refused to acknowledge Trump’s incitement to insurrection, reiterated the president’s lies and conspiracy theories, and dismissed the impeachment vote as a “televised spectacle” – confirming the observation of Representative Maxine Waters as the “Republican Party” now the Trump Party. ”
Wednesday’s urgent vote on the indictment will not be received with the same urgency by the Senate. Just as the Senate Republicans prevented Trump’s removal a year ago, all indications are that they are ready to thwart the judiciary again. Despite now criticizing the president whom he has served so diligently for the past four years, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Wednesday denied urging New York Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to call the Senate back for immediate hearing . Even if a trial of Trump were to take place after he stepped down on January 20, as is now being proposed, there is little evidence that a majority of Senate Republicans would be willing to condemn the 45th President and dismiss him looking for a new ruled out presidential term in 2024.
Much was done on Wednesday by the handful of Republicans who actually voted for impeachment. But only 10 Republican members – less than 5 percent of the Congress – did the right thing.
Most Republicans refused to break with Trump. Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, the member of the judiciary committee who led the anti-impeachment forces on Wednesday, actually reiterated the same outlandish claims about the 2020 election that Trump used to ignite the mob that marched on the Capitol a week earlier was. Jordan and his colleagues attacked Democrats who supported Black Lives Matter demonstrations that expressed legitimate concerns about past elections and who charged Trump with high crimes and misdemeanors in 2019. North Carolina Republican Dan Bishop actually claimed the impeachment decision was “an incitement.”
James McGovern of Massachusetts, a disgruntled chairman of the House Rules Committee, replied that Jordan and his allies are still “showing up on this floor talking about whataboutism and trying to make these false equivalences. Give me a break.”
One of the few Republicans who did the right thing on Wednesday, Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, said before the vote“I have no doubt that the President of the United States broke his oath of office and instigated this insurrection.”
But Trump isn’t the only federal official to have intrigued an oath to prevent the confirmation of the election of President-elect Joe Biden. Nor is he the only civil servant who should be held accountable for deliberately lying to the American people and creating a climate in which democracy has been threatened and the nation’s government has been disrupted by violence.
The oath breakers
Members of Congress began their term on January 3rd with a curse an oath “To support and defend the United States Constitution against all enemies at home and abroad”. Within days of pledging to “show true faith and allegiance” to this oath, dozens of these members adopted the agenda of a president calling on mobs to attack the Capitol to forcibly dismiss the results of the 2020 election.
These are the facts about what happened on January 6th.
Trump was charged on these facts. It should be removed. But what about the members of the House and Senate who joined Trump? What about the members, like Alabama Republican Mo Brooks, with whom the mob rallied on Jan. 6? the Scream“Today is the day American patriots start jotting down names and kicking their asses.”
How will members of Congress – Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives – who respect their oath of office react to the actions of colleagues who have joined the agenda of the American fascists who stormed the Capitol?
In Wednesday’s impeachment debate, the January 6 violence was identified as “domestic terrorism” instigated by Donald Trump and the Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar accurately described the attack as “a targeted blow to the most important process that makes us a democracy”. But Trump had partners in his shame. Representative Gwen Moore, of Wisconsin, reminds us that “the actions of these violent looters in the Capitol were instigated by Donald Trump along with many of his close, radical, right-wing Republican friends.” This incitement did not end when forces loyal to the Republic finally drove the mob from the Capitol. On Wednesday evening eight senators and 139 representatives Voted to maintain one or both of the objections to the election results, which were being considered in an attack by Trump supporters.
“Amid all this misinformation that has led to chaos, destruction and violence, and despite strong opposition from Senate Chairman Mitch McConnell” Said Moore in a statement, “[the Republican senators and representatives] voted not to confirm the election results in order to install Trump as America’s first non-democratically elected leader since the American Revolution. ”
The eight Republican Senators Who voted in favor of maintaining the objections was:
Tommy Tuberville from Alabama
Rick Scott from Florida
Roger Marshall from Kansas
John Kennedy from Louisiana
Cindy Hyde-Smith from Mississippi
Josh Hawley from Missouri
Ted Cruz from Texas
Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming
In the House of Representatives, 139 out of 209 Republican members joined what was called “the riot caucus. “Aren’t you as guilty as Trump?
The call to accountability
Last Friday, the Senate Democratic Vice President Patty Murray of Washington called on Hawley and Cruz to resign. Have newspapers across the country pushed various senators and representatives resign. Unfortunately, the members of the Sedition Caucus are no more likely to resign than the President.
Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio went further. Argue that Hawley and Cruz “You betrayed your oath of office and unleashed a violent uprising against our democracy,” he called for her resignation. “If you don’t resign, the Senate must expel you.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island said The Senate Ethics Committee “must consider the expulsion or reprimand and punishment of Senators Cruz, Hawley, and perhaps others.”
This is a bold demand that is being pushed back in a Congress where expulsions are rare and where there are always concerns about the abuse of accountability processes by partisans.
However, history tells us that there are times when it is necessary to address threats to the republic posed by those who have taken oaths to defend it.
The 14th amendment on the constitutional mandates in section 3:
No person may be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or electorate for the President and Vice-President, or hold any civil or military office in the United States or in any state that has previously sworn an oath in Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of one By state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of a state in support of the United States Constitution, must have participated in, or given help or comfort to, insurrection or rebellion against the United States.
Section 5 of the amendment continues: “Congress has the power to enforce the provisions of this article through appropriate legislation.”
Missouri Representatives Cori Bushis a newly elected Democrat serving on the House Justice Committee propose now “A resolution to investigate and expel members who tried to overthrow the presidential election and instigated a coup attempt by the white supremacists.”
Bush’s resolution Instructs the House Management Committee and the Ethics Committee to “investigate and prepare a report on whether or not those Members of the House who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results have violated their constitutional oath Rules of the House of Representatives and should be sanctioned, including removal from the House of Representatives. ”
Forty-seven members of the House – including newly elected Democrats like New Yorker Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones; senior members such as Jan Schakowsky from Illinois and Mark Pocan from Wisconsin; as well as “Squad” members Omar from Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib from Michigan have supported Bush’s efforts. Yet the leaders of the House in both parties are cautious about sanctioning their own. Republicans and some Democrats are already making nonsense about the need for “healing” – as if healing can happen without accountability.
There will be indications that the Republicans who protested last Wednesday against the confirmation of the 2020 election results were only standing by their party’s president even after the deadly attack on the Capitol.
That is an absurd defense.
As former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said A century ago, “patriotism meant standing by the country. It does not mean standing by the president or any other official, except to the extent that he himself is standing by the country. “Trump didn’t stand by the country; he hurt it badly and threatens to cause more damage. On Wednesday, Cori Bush informed the House that “the white supremacist president who started a white supremacist uprising” must be held accountable. She was right to say that. And she rightly argues that any official who swore an oath in defense of the Constitution and instead repeated and approved the president’s incitement to insurrection must also be held accountable.
.
