'Paralysed with fear': Incredible images emerge as security scaled up at the US Capitol
Remarkable images reveal the ramped up security at the US Capitol complex after Donald Trump became the first US president to be impeached for a second time.
Trump’s impeachment came a week after he encouraged loyalists to “fight like hell” against election results before a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol.
The FBI fear another “uprising” from Trump supporters at the US Capitol as a result of his latest impeachment, as well as across the nation.
The majority of Republicans were said to be “paralysed with fear” ahead of Trump’s second impeachment vote as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged all members to “search their souls”.
“[Trump] must go,” Pelosi said. “He is a clear and present danger to the nation we all love.”
Photos show National Guard troops sleeping on the marble floors of the Capitol building after 20,000 were deployed to Washington DC ahead of next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Security is exceptionally tight with perimeters around the Capitol complex and metal-detector screenings required for lawmakers entering the House chamber.
“We are debating this historic measure at a crime scene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.
Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat, told MSNBC many of his Republican colleagues fear their lives could be in danger if they voted to support the impeachment.
“The majority of them are actually paralysed with fear,” he said.
“I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears talking to me, and said they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.”
Trump’s removal from office unlikely
Actual removal seems unlikely before the January 20 inauguration.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Republican leader would not agree to bring the chamber back immediately, all be ensuring a Senate trial could not begin at least until January 19.
While Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 brought no Republican votes in the House, several GOP leaders and other lawmakers are breaking with the party to join Democrats this time, saying Trump violated his oath to protect and defend US democracy.
However, most Republicans planned to vote “no,” and Rep. Tom McClintock of California said during debate that impeaching Trump a week before he leaves office is a “petty, vindictive and gratuitous act.”
“Every movement has a lunatic fringe,” he said.
McConnell believes Trump committed ‘impeachable offences’
Though McConnell is declining to hasten an impeachment trial, a Republican strategist told The Associated Press the GOP leader believes Trump committed impeachable offences and considers the Democrats’ impeachment drive an opportunity to reduce the divisive, chaotic president’s hold on the GOP.
McConnell called major Republican donors last weekend to gauge their thinking about Trump and was told that Trump had clearly crossed a line. McConnell told them he was through with Trump, said the strategist, who demanded anonymity to describe McConnell’s conversations.
The New York Times first reported McConnell’s views on impeachment on Tuesday.
The stunning collapse of Trump’s final days in office, along with warnings of more violence ahead, leaves the nation at an uneasy and unfamiliar juncture before Biden takes office.
Trump faces a single charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
The four-page impeachment resolution relies on Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, including at a White House rally on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in making its case for “high crimes and misdemeanours” as demanded in the Constitution.
Trump takes no responsibility for riot, speaks of ‘tremendous anger’
“To continue on this path, I think it’s causing tremendous danger to our country, and it’s causing tremendous anger,” Trump said Tuesday, his first remarks to reporters since last week’s violence.
A Capitol police officer died from injuries suffered in the riot, and police shot and killed a woman during the siege.
Three other people died in what authorities said were medical emergencies.
Lawmakers scrambled for safety and hid as rioters took control of the Capitol, delaying by hours the tally of Electoral College votes that was the last step in finalising Biden’s victory.
The outgoing president offered no condolences for those dead or injured, only saying, “I want no violence.”
Prominent allies abandon Trump ahead of historic vote
The Republicans announced they would vote to impeach Trump, cleaving the Republican leadership, and the party itself.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” said Cheney in a statement.
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
Cheney’s father was the vice president under President George W. Bush and a Republican leader in the House.
“She knows of what she speaks,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic majority leader.
Unlike a year ago, Trump faces impeachment as a weakened leader, having lost his own reelection as well as the Senate Republican majority.
President livid at disloyalty from Republicans
The president was said to be livid with perceived disloyalty from McConnell and Cheney, as calls mounted for her ouster.
He was also deeply frustrated that he could not hit back with his shuttered Twitter account, the fear of which has kept most Republicans in line for years, according to White House officials and Republicans close to the West Wing who weren’t authorised to speak publicly about private conversations.
'Never a greater betrayal': Close allies turn on Trump as impeachment looms
Trump issues ominous warning to Biden, claims impeachment 'zero risk'
The team around Trump has hollowed out, without any plan for combating the impeachment effort.
Trump leaned on Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to push Republican senators, while chief of staff Mark Meadows called some of his former colleagues on the Hill.
Trump was expected to watch much of Wednesday’s proceedings on TV from the White House residence and his private dining area off the Oval Office.
In the House, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a top Trump ally, suggested a lighter censure instead, but that option crumbled.
Pence refuses to invoke the 25th amendment
The House tried first to push Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to intervene, passing a resolution Tuesday night calling on them to invoke the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump from office.
Pence made it clear he would not do so, saying in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that it was “time to unite our country as we prepare to inaugurate President-elect Joe Biden.”
It’s far from clear there will be the two-thirds vote in the evenly divided Senate needed to convict and remove Trump.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over the weekend in calling for Trump to “go away as soon as possible”.
The FBI warned ominously of potential armed protests by Trump loyalists ahead of Biden’s inauguration. Capitol Police urged lawmakers to be on alert. Charges of sedition are being considered for rioters.
New security in place, lawmakers were required to pass through metal detectors to enter the House chamber, not far from where Capitol police, guns drawn, had barricaded the door against the rioters. Some Republican lawmakers complained about the screening.
Biden has said it’s important to ensure that the “folks who engaged in sedition and threatening the lives, defacing public property, caused great damage — that they be held accountable.”
Fending off concerns that an impeachment trial would bog down his first days in office, the president-elect is encouraging senators to divide their time between taking taking up his priorities of confirming his nominees and approving Covid-19 relief while also conducting the trial.
The impeachment bill draws from Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat to Biden.
Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump ally, has said there was no sign of widespread fraud.
Like the resolution to invoke the 25th Amendment, the impeachment bill also details Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” him more votes and his White House rally rant to “fight like hell” by heading to the Capitol.
While some have questioned impeaching the president so close to the end of his term, there is precedent. In 1876, during the Ulysses Grant administration, War Secretary William Belknap was impeached by the House the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.
Trump was impeached in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine but acquitted by the Senate in 2020.
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