Trump faces impeachment if doesn’t resign

WASHINGTON: Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Friday that the House would move to impeach President Trump over his role in inciting a violent mob attack on the Capitol if he did not resign “immediately.”

According to American media reports, Pelosi has also reached out to Republican colleagues to join the push to force President Trump from office. According to New York Times, Pelosi wrote a letter to members of the House, wherein she invoked the resignation of Richard Nixon amid the Watergate scandal, when Republicans prevailed upon the president to tender resignation and avoid an impeachment, calling Donald Trump’s actions a “horrific assault on our democracy.”

“Today, following the president’s dangerous and seditious acts, Republicans in Congress need to follow that example and call on Trump to depart his office — immediately,” she wrote. “If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action.”

The paper claims that Pelosi also said she had spoken with General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.”

A spokesman for General Milley, Colonel Dave Butler, confirmed that the two had spoken and said the general had “answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority,” the paper wrote.

The news report went on to say that some Defense Department officials have expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.

President Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.

The letter from the speaker came as momentum for impeachment was rapidly growing on Friday among rank-and-file Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum, and a handful of Republicans offered potential support.

The prospect of forcing President Trump from office in less than two weeks appeared remote, the paper said, given the logistical and political challenges involved, given that a two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required. But the push unfolded amid a sense of national crisis following the Capitol siege, as White House resignations piled up and some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Trump from holding political office in the future, the report said.