Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California on Monday formally transmitted an article of impeachment to the U.S. Senate against former President Donald Trump, which charges the then-president with inciting a mob into a frenzy, resulting in their storming the U.S. Capitol Building.
Alabama Republican Party chair Terry Lathan denounced the impeachment trial of the former President as “abject partisanship:”
“This is the greatest display of abject partisanship by the Democrats I have ever witnessed during my political lifetime. During his Inaugural address, President Biden spoke repeatedly of the need to unite our country using ‘unity/uniting’ no fewer than nine times. He also pledged to ‘be a President for all Americans’. Today’s actions are the exact opposite of unity. His party’s persistence on their path of ‘Get Trump’ with the transmission of these irresponsible and false articles of impeachment against President Trump, now a private citizen, are an abuse of political power. Instead of showing us how he will work to heal our great nation and focus on the important issues we are facing, President Biden is playing second fiddle to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and their ultra left-wing agenda. No evidence, no hearings, no nothing – just shameful political abuse of power.
“If President Biden doesn’t ask the Democrats to stand down and spend their time on serious issues facing the American people, his ‘unity’ plea is a complete farce. This obvious political vendetta will be met with fierce response in election booths across the nation in 2022. A reminder to them all that on November 3, 2020, there was a massive Republican wave across our country in U.S. House seats and state legislatures – and that was no accident. There are 75 million voters that will be loudly heard again in the U.S. House and Senate elections on our ballots if this type of deplorable behavior continues.”
This will be the first time in American history that an impeachment trial will be held for an American president after he has left office. In 1974, President Richard Nixon, facing impeachment, resigned rather than becoming the second president in the history of the nation to be impeached.
The House halted impeachment proceedings and no Senate trial ever occurred. Since then, President Bill Clinton and Trump in 2019 were both impeached, but they, like Andrew Johnson, were not convicted by the Senate.
Trump is already the first president in American history to be impeached twice. The Senate impeachment trial will be in February. House prosecutors hope that if Trump is found guilty by the Senate, then they will vote to bar Trump from running for president again in 2024.
Since this has never been done before in the nation’s history, scholars are divided on whether the Senate has the constitutional authority to bar a former president from running for office again.
