By Luke Broadwater
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Friday that the House would take steps to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in inciting a mafia violent attack on Capitol Hill if he did not resign “immediately”, appealing to Republicans to join the effort to force him to leave office.
In a letter to members of the House, the speaker invoked Richard Nixon’s resignation amid the Watergate scandal, when Republicans persuaded the president to step down and avoid the ignominy of impeachment, calling Trump’s actions a “terrible assault on our democracy.”
“Today, following the dangerous and seditious acts of the president, Republicans in Congress must follow that example and ask Trump to leave his office, immediately,” he wrote. “If the president does not leave office imminently and voluntarily, Congress will proceed with our action.”
Pelosi also said she had spoken with General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing launch codes.”
A spokesman for Milley, Colonel Dave Butler, confirmed that the two had spoken and said the general had “answered their questions about the nuclear command authority process.”
Some Defense Department officials have expressed anger that political leaders appear to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the job of Congress and cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.
Trump, they noted, remains the commander-in-chief and, unless he is removed, the military is obligated to follow his legal orders. While military officers may refuse to carry out orders they deem illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
Pelosi’s letter came as momentum for impeachment was growing rapidly Friday among grassroots Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum, with a handful of Republicans offering potential support.
Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 4 Democrat, said if Vice President Mike Pence did not invoke the 25th Amendment to forcibly relieve Trump of his duties, Democrats were prepared to act in impeachment in the middle of the next. week.
A Pelosi aide said Friday that she had yet to hear from Pence, despite exerting intense public pressure on him to act. But Pence was said to be opposed to doing so and was making plans to move on.
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