WASHINGTON (AP) — This time the fury enveloping the Capitol comes not from an insurgent mob but from within.
The anger on display is searing — Democrat against Republican; Republican against Republican; legislators of both parties against the catastrophic security failure that left top leaders of the government vulnerable to last week’s violence as well as to the coronavirus in their ranks.
The rage is being stoked even hotter by the passions aroused by Democrats’ fresh drive to impeach President Donald Trump.
This is a “powder keg” moment, one Democrat said. It’s certainly a historic one.
The House is moving toward making Trump the first president to be impeached twice as part of an extraordinary effort to remove him from office before Democrat Joe Biden’s inauguration a week from Wednesday. The charge to be brought against him: “incitement of insurrection.”
Once again the phrase of the founders, “high crimes and misdemeanors,” has been turned against Trump, who was acquitted by the Senate in his first impeachment trial. And tempers are flaring in congressional hallways and offices still cleaning up from the trashing by the attackers.
Shaken members, long accustomed to protective bubbles, inquired whether they can expense their own bulletproof vests to taxpayers (yes they can). Democrats assailed a collection of always-Trumpers — Republicans who pressed the president’s false accusations of a fraudulent election even after the mob, motivated by the same lies, had finally been cleared away.
Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, among others, called for the expulsion or censure of Republican members who argued Trump’s case for overturning the will of the voters, if those lawmakers refuse to resign. Democrats were primarily after Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and a selection of House lawmakers who had also tried to throw up obstacles to Biden’s election certification.
“Failing to hold those responsible for the insurrection accountable would be a profound injustice and give a green light to future authoritarians,” Casey said.
Said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland: “They have a full-blown independent reality, totally cut apart from the world of facts, and that is the groundwork for fascism. When you add racism, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking, that is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy.”
There was Republican to Republican finger-pointing, too. Much of it was aimed at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California for not showing enough leadership, according to congressional GOP aides who spoke on condition of anonymity and former lawmakers.
Some House Republicans are upset that McCarthy, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Washington, defended him too forcefully and for too long, making it harder to dissociate themselves from Trump after the Capitol siege.
In contrast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky explicitly criticized Trump’s drive to overturn Biden’s election, saying it would “damage our republic forever.” He did so even as the mob breached the Capitol and lunged toward the chambers against outnumbered police.
McCarthy acknowledged outrage among his Republican colleagues over the attack in a letter to them Monday declaring “I share your anger and your pain” and making sure they knew the mob’s threat also came close to him.
“Zip ties were found on staff desks in my office,” he wrote. “Windows were smashed in. Property was stolen. Those images will never leave us.”
As if nerves weren’t raw enough over the actions of Trump and his diehard loyalists, three Democrats who sheltered with Republican House members when they were spirited to a secure room disclosed they had since tested positive for COVID-19. Some of the Republicans in that room over those hours had refused to wear masks.
Indeed, one of the newly infected, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said “several Republicans not only cruelly refused to wear a mask but recklessly mocked colleagues and staff who offered them one.”
Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Brad Schneider of Illinois were the others who announced positive tests after their time in the room as everyone waited to hear whether more cases were coming.
Democrats were livid.
“In the midst of a deadly assault on our United States Capitol, a number of our Republican colleagues laughed off rules designed to keep not just their colleagues safe, but to protect the lives of the teams of workers keeping things going, law enforcement, and staff throughout the Capitol,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.
On Tuesday, the House sergeant at arms office issued a statement saying all members and others going into the chamber must be screened for prohibited items, including firearms, and anyone failing to wear a mask on the House floor will be removed. The House was also voting to impose fines on lawmakers without face coverings.
The screening requirement comes as at least one lawmaker, freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has talked openly about carrying her firearm around town and onto the Capitol grounds, which has infuriated gun-control Democrats.
The new metal detectors outside the House chamber also galled some Republicans, some of whom uttered obscenities or ignored the devices, claiming they were impeding them from voting.
At a virtual meeting of the House rules committee, Democrats implored Republicans to stop peddling Trump’s myths of a stolen election. Trump’s accusations have been refuted for weeks by judges and election officials but motivated the mob and are still believed by legions of Trump supporters.
“When does service to Donald Trump end?” demanded Democratic Rep. Joe Morelle of New York. “It should be an easy one to answer.”
“When the people speak, it’s over,” he went on. Otherwise, “we have nothing. There is no America.”
There were some signs that the top Republican in the House was backing off his unwavering show of loyalty to Trump.
McCarthy had joined most House Republicans in December in supporting a lawsuit to block Biden’s election, and again last week in two votes against certifying Biden’s win. The lawsuit and both votes failed. He has so far avoided lambasting Trump publicly. But in a private conference call Monday with GOP colleagues, he expressed an openness to censuring Trump.
McCarthy “amplified the president’s disinformation about widescale election fraud,” former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who often clashed with Trump, said in an interview last week. “That has been irresponsible. Mitch doesn’t fall in that category.”
“McCarthy is all in with Trump,” said Paul Cook, who retired in January as a GOP congressman from California and had differences with him over the years. “I think sometimes you have the greater good of the country, it’s not always the party.”
A senior congressional Republican and defender of McCarthy, who would only speak anonymously, said the GOP leader would have been criticized no matter how the congressional challenge to Biden’s electoral votes played out. The Republican also said McCarthy’s strong relationship with Trump has benefitted GOP lawmakers because it’s enabled him to talk Trump out of attacking them, especially moderate Republicans who vote against him.
But to Cook, it all comes down to the oath. “You take an oath, a lot of people kind of forget the words to that,” he said.
In their oath of office, lawmakers vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
No. 3 House GOP leader backs Trump impeachment as tide grows
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican opposition to impeaching President Donald Trump began crumbling at the party’s upper echelons on Tuesday as the No. 3 House GOP leader said she would vote to impeach Trump.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement that, while not unexpected, shook Congress as lawmakers prepared for a Wednesday House vote. With Democrats commanding that chamber, a vote impeaching Trump for an unprecedented second time seemed certain.
More ominously for a president clinging to his final week in office, The New York Times reported that influential Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thinks Trump committed an impeachable offense and is glad Democrats are moving against him.
Citing unidentified people familiar with the influential Kentucky Republican’s thinking, the Times reported McConnell believes moving against Trump will help the GOP forge a future independent of the divisive, chaotic president.
McConnell thinks Trump’s behavior before last week’s assault on the Capitol by fuming Trump supporters cost Republicans their Senate majority in two Georgia runoff elections, the newspaper reported. That’s a sentiment shared by many Republicans about Trump, who rather than focusing on bolstering Georgia’s two sitting GOP senators spent the last weeks of their campaign reciting his false narrative that his own reelection was ruined by Democratic election fraud.
McConnell is said to be angry at the president over the insurrection at the Capitol and the twin defeats in Georgia that cost the party its Senate majority, according to a Republican granted anonymity to discuss the situation.
Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has run afoul of Trump and far-right Republicans over the years on issues like wearing a facemask and withdrawing troops from Syria. She’s respected by mainstream conservatives and is one of the GOP’s few House female stars.
“Good for her for honoring her oath of office,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters when asked about Cheney’s decision. “Would that more Republicans would honor their oaths of office.”
Lawmakers’ oath includes a vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Reps. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., an Air Force veteran, and John Katko, R-N.Y., a former federal prosecutor, became the first rank-and-file GOP lawmakers to say they would vote to impeach Trump.
The House will vote on an impeachment article charging Trump with incitement of insurrection over his goading of a pro-Trump crowd that poured past police lines into the Capitol last Wednesday, disrupting lawmakers’ ceremonial counting of the electoral votes that sealed Trump’s defeat, leaving five dead and widespread damage.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the President of the United States broke his oath of office and incited this insurrection,” Kinzinger said in a statement about Trump, whom he’s repeatedly criticized over the years. Kinzinger added if Trump’s inciting “a deadly insurrection” against Congress “is not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?”
“To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequence is a direct threat to the future of our democracy,” Katko said in a statement. “For that reason, I cannot sit by without taking action” and backing impeachment.
In remarks to his supporters outside the White House before they streamed to the Capitol, Trump told them “this is the time for strength,” adding, “We got to get rid of the weak Congress people,” describing them as “the Liz Cheneys of the world.”
Republicans have said they expected perhaps 10 House GOP lawmakers to break ranks and vote with Democrats to impeach Trump, and a clear majority of Republicans seem likely to stand by him.
But Trump may not have helped himself Tuesday. In his first public appearance since the attack on the Capitol, he took no responsibility for his role in egging on his supporters and added falsely, “People thought that what I said was totally appropriate.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has told his colleagues that he believes impeaching Trump would be wrong but has not ruled out censuring him or taking other steps. House GOP leaders say they won’t press their colleagues on how they will vote Wednesday.
In its story, the Times did not say how McConnell would vote in a Senate trial to convict Trump. Such a finding would usually result in a president’s removal from office, but in this case it seems unlikely a trial could be held and concluded before Jan. 20, when Democrat Joe Biden will be inaugurated to replace him.
McConnell has been the engine that has driven Trump’s Supreme Court appointees and scores of other federal judicial nominees through the chamber. While seldom criticizing Trump, he often resorts to silence when pressed by reporters on some of Trump’s more outrageous statements and their relationship has never seemed warm.
One White House official said McConnell and Trump last spoke in in mid-December.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.