Clyburn says House Democrats will vote this week to impeach Trump but may wait to send articles to Senate
By Felicia Sonmez, Juliet Eilperin, Amy B Wang 1 hr ago
House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Sunday that the House plans to vote this week to impeach President Trump — but that the chamber may wait a few months to submit the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
Clyburn’s comments come amid tensions in the Democratic Party on whether to press ahead with action to hold Trump accountable for last week’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol or whether to prioritize the agenda of President-elect Joe Biden, who will be inaugurated Jan. 20.
“I think that will come. Probably Tuesday, and maybe Wednesday, but it will happen this week,” Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat and a key Biden ally, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” when asked about the House taking action to impeach Trump.
[As Trump leaves office weakened, Republicans wonder if his wounds are fatal]
Democrats are weighing whether to wait until after the Biden administration’s first 100 days to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, to allow the new president to install key members of his team.
“So if we are the people’s House, let’s do the people’s work and let’s vote to impeach this president,” Clyburn said, “and then we’ll decide later — or the Senate will decide later — what to do with that, an impeachment.”
Clyburn was instrumental in boosting Biden during last year’s Democratic presidential campaign, giving the former vice president support ahead of the crucial South Carolina primary.
Clyburn also suggested that Biden should pursue an ambitious set of policies even though his party holds slim margins in both chambers.
“I do not think President Biden’s agenda should be scaled back at all,” the congressman said, adding that the incoming president should seek out Republicans’ support as much as possible. “But if they aren’t going to be cooperative, then he should use his executive authority and get it done.”
[How one of America’s ugliest days unraveled inside and outside the Capitol]
Another close Biden ally, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), on Sunday echoed the president-elect’s statement last week that the decision on whether to impeach Trump is up to Congress.
Trump “has lost the right to be president,” Coons said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” describing the Wednesday attack on the Capitol as an “attempted coup.” But he also said Biden “is focused on the enormous challenges that will face him when he becomes president 10 days from now.”
Coons said the most important thing that Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress can do right now is to stop spreading the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen and work to persuade Trump’s supporters that Biden is the duly-elected president.
“There can only be reconciliation with repentance,” Coons said.
Most Republicans have largely been silent about what should be the consequences of the riot and Trump’s role in inciting it. But some on Sunday joined Democrats in calling for Trump to resign.
“I think, at this point, with just a few days left, it’s the best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rearview mirror for us,” Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked whether Trump should step down. “That could happen immediately. I’m not optimistic it will. But I do think that would be the best way forward.”
While Toomey has said that he believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses, the senator shied away from pushing impeachment as the best possible option forward, noting that only 10 days remained in Trump’s term.
On NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Toomey said his GOP colleagues who helped perpetuate Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud would have “a lot of soul-searching to do.”
“The problem is they were complicit in the big lie, this lie that Donald Trump won the election in a landslide and it was all stolen,” said Toomey, who is not running for reelection. “They compounded that with this notion that somehow this could all be reversed in the final moments of the congressional proceedings. … That’s going to haunt them for a very long time.”
Pressed on why he was surprised that Trump’s rhetoric had fueled such violence, Toomey said that the president’s actions were “wildly different from [his] offensive tweets” and that he had never thought he should play the role of the editor of Trump’s Twitter feed.
The senator said he still did not regret voting for Trump and instead accused the Democratic Party of supposedly being so radicalized that voters could only make the “rational decision” to cast their ballots for Trump.
“Nobody could’ve anticipated what has happened, I don’t think, subsequent to the election,” Toomey said.
Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Sunday, January 10th 2021 at 1:46PM
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