House Democrats consider mid-next week for possible vote on Trump’s second impeachment

House Democrats are furious at President Donald Trump and are quickly building momentum to move on impeachment of Trump in the next several days — as soon as the middle of next week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team ran through their options Thursday night and the overwhelming sentiment was impeachment was the way forward, according to multiple sources. While there were some dissenters concerned that the move could be perceived as an overreach and turn off Trump supporters in their districts, the view among most top Democrats — including Pelosi — is that Trump should be held accountable for his actions.

This process is not going to be anything like 2019. This would be fast: No investigations and no weeks-long hearings. The most likely scenario is that a member brings a privileged resolution to the House floor and offers it during session.

This requires Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, to bring members back, which folks expect to be announced sometime after the 12 p.m. ET caucus call. Once they do, it kicks off the process for a vote in a matter of days. A simple majority is enough to impeach the President. If they do this, it would make Trump the first President to be impeached twice.

That would not mean he would be removed from office, which would require the Senate to vote to do so.

House Judiciary Committee aides are consulting with the authors of one of the Democratic impeachment resolutions — Reps. David Cicilline, Jamie Raskin and Ted Lieu — in order to prepare for moving quickly to a potential impeachment vote on the House floor next week, according to three sources.

The aides are helping to edit and fine-tune the impeachment resolution, the sources said, which includes an article of impeachment for abuse of power, charging that Trump incited the insurrection at the Capitol. The impeachment resolution introduced Thursday also includes Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, but some moderate members are urging that impeachment should be kept as straightforward as possible in order to keep focus on Wednesday’s events.

The draft impeachment resolution has now includes 131 co-sponsors, including Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and Rules Chairman Jim McGovern, a further sign of growing momentum. Nadler said Thursday he supported bypassing his committee to move an impeachment resolution straight to the floor.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 in House leadership, told reporters on a call Friday he believes the House should impeach Trump. “He’s always wanting to do stuff that never been done before, there’s never going to present impeached twice before,” Clyburn said. “So let’s impeach him, give him what he wants.”

Pelosi spoke to Joint Chiefs chairman about nuclear codes

In a new letter to lawmakers Friday, Pelosi again reiterated her desire for Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power, but if that doesn’t happen, Pelosi said the House would “proceed with our action.”

Pelosi also wrote that she spoke with Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, about Trump and the nuclear codes.

“This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Pelosi wrote. “The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy.”

This is moving fast. Members weren’t in this place two days ago. The events of Wednesday, the images that have played across television screens, the accounts of what happened throughout the Capitol complex and the President’s approach to all of it before and after have all culminated in members feeling like something has to happen now. Pelosi said it Thursday at her presser, members have been texting her nonstop “impeach, impeach.”

Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the assistant House Speaker, told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” on Friday that they could bring articles of impeachment to the floor as “early as mid-next week.” She later tweeted that Democrats were “actively working” to find the quickest timeline for a vote.

This isn’t just Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and liberals asking for impeachment. There were notable comments Thursday from Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a moderate from Michigan who didn’t vote for Pelosi for speaker less than a week ago, who pushed for invoking the 25th Amendment. Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia also released a statement pushing for the 25th Amendment, but then saying, “if the Vice President fails to act, it will become necessary for every member of Congress bound by our Constitutional oaths to take further action. If we refuse to respond to a U.S. President inciting an uprising against our democracy, we risk losing it forever.”

More than 60 Democrats, led by Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, sent a letter to Democratic leaders Friday asking they reconvene and work to impeach Trump following Wednesday’s Capitol breach.

“We write to ask respectfully that the House reconvene immediately to reckon with the assault on our democracy that we experienced on January 6th,” the Democrats wrote. “We could take up the question of whether President Trump should be censured or impeached for encouraging a violent attack on the United States Congress, as well as Representative Raskin’s proposal that Congress appoint a body, as provided by the 25th Amendment, to determine whether the President is fit to discharge the powers and duties of his office.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who led the House’s impeachment inquiry against Trump in 2019 over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate President-elect Joe Biden in the early stages of the 2020 campaign, said in a statement Friday he supported removing Trump through the 25th Amendment or impeachment.

“Every day that he remains in office, he is a danger to the Republic, and he should leave office immediately, through resignation, the 25th Amendment or impeachment,” Schiff said.

What would happen in the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not spoken on this. But given that the House would likely pass this with just days left in Trump’s Presidency, it’s likely McConnell would just run out the clock.

The GOP is frustrated, exasperated by Trump at this point. CNN reported that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a yelling match Wednesday with Trump as rioters were overrunning the Capitol Building. But, McConnell likes to avoid intra-party fights and forcing members to take a vote on impeachment when there are only days left of Trump’s presidency wouldn’t be a good way to keep his members united.

Sen. Ben Sasse, the Nebraska Republican who was an early critic of Trump’s election fraud rhetoric, told CBS Morning News he’d consider any articles of impeachment from the House.

“The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move because, as I’ve told you, I believe the President has disregarded his oath of office,” Sasse said Friday.

This story has been updated with additional developments Friday.