At least four GOP members of the House so far, including one of its highest-ranking Republicans, will vote to impeach President Trump in light of the deadly attack on the Capitol last week by a violent mob of his supporters.
Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said in a statement that she would vote to impeach Mr. Trump after he whipped up his supporters Wednesday at a rally not far from the Capitol.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President,” Cheney said, referring to Mr. Trump’s appearance at Wednesday’s rally, when he told his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” She also criticized his repeated calls for Republican lawmakers to try to overturn the election.
“The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,” Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, continued. “I will vote to impeach the President.”
When President Trump was impeached in 2019 over his attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden, no House Republicans voted in favor of impeaching him. But this time, in his second impeachment, other Republicans, too, have signaled that they would consider voting to impeach him, and House GOP leaders are not expected to pressure their members to vote a certain way.
Congressman John Katko was the first Republican to say he’d vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Katko represents a district in upstate New York which leans Democratic, and he has faced significant challenges in his last two elections.
“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 reported by Syracuse.com. “For that reason, I cannot sit by without taking action. I will vote to impeach this president.”
Congressman Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, announced Tuesday in a tweet, “I will vote in favor of impeachment.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that the President of the United States broke his oath of office and incited this insurrection. He used his position in the Executive to attack the Legislative … If these actions — the Article II branch inciting a deadly insurrection against the Article I branch — are not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?”
Last week, Kinzinger also called on Vice President Pence and Mr. Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.
Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan announced his support for impeachment Tuesday night. “I would have preferred a bipartisan, formal censure rather than a drawn-out impeachment process,” he said in a statement.”But it is time to say: Enough is enough.”
Upton said Congress must “send a clear message that our country cannot and will not tolerate any effort by any President to impede the peaceful transfer of power.”
Other House Republicans, too, are weighing a break with the president. Congressman Steve Stivers has said that he “would not oppose” the Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment. Congressman Peter Meijer also said on Monday that he was “strongly considering” impeachment.
The majority of the House Republican conference — including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise — voted to overturn the Electoral College results last week. But dozens of other Republicans did not and may be open to considering impeachment.
Six Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution to censure Mr. Trump on Tuesday evening. Unlike impeachment, censuring does not have any practical consequences, but would only be a formal condemnation.
In the Senate a few senators have also signaled that they, too, may be willing to consider voting to remove Mr. Trump from office, though the bar is higher in the Senate. While it takes a simple majority to impeach the president in the House, two-thirds of the senators must vote for the president’s conviction and removal.
