House Democrats looking at impeachment vote next week, Rep. Clark says

Kasie Hunt and Leigh Ann Caldwell and Mike Memoli and Alex Moe and Rebecca Shabad

WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders are eyeing a vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as early as the middle of next week, Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clark said Friday.

"We know that we have limited time, but that every day that Donald Trump is president of the United States, is a day of grave danger. So we can use procedural tools to get articles of impeachment to the floor for a House vote quickly," Clark, D-Mass., said on CNN’s "New Day."

Asked how early the House Judiciary Committee could bring the articles to the floor, Clark said, "That will be...as early as mid-next week."

After the interview, Clark clarified that Democrats are still working to determine the timeline.

On a Democratic Caucus conference call Friday afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told her members she will speak with President-elect Joe Biden in the afternoon about impeachment, according to three people on the call. House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., and House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., both called for for a 9/11-style commission to be created, according to two sources on the call.

In a letter to House Democrats on Friday afternoon, Pelosi reiterated her and presumptive Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's, D-N.Y., demand that Vice President Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office before Biden's inauguration. She said that Congress will take action if Trump does not leave office "imminently."

Pelosi also wrote that she spoke to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley on Friday morning about preventing Trump from launching a nuclear strike, saying her goal was "to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike."

"The situation of this unhinged president could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy," Pelosi wrote.

During an hour-long zoom call with reporters Friday, Clyburn said Trump could be the first president impeached twice.

"He's always wanting to do stuff that has never been done before," Clyburn said. "There's never been a president impeached twice before. So, let's impeach him and give him what he wants."

“This is bad stuff. And it's time for everybody to call it what it is," he continued. "It is time for the Republican leadership to invoke the 25th Amendment. They need to do it. Pence needs to do it. But if he doesn't, we need to impeach. We need to impeach."

Meanwhile, Trump announced on Twitter late Friday morning that he plans to skip President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.

There have been only a handful of times throughout American history when an outgoing sitting president did not attend the inauguration of his successor. John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson all skipped the event, while Richard Nixon departed the White House after his resignation and did not attend Gerald Ford's swearing-in.

NBC News learned that Democratic leaders met Thursday evening to discuss how to remove the president from office, according to a member of Congress who was in the room. They discussed how to expedite the process and could call the House back into session as soon as Monday to start the process.

The matter had not yet been decided, and there were voices in the leadership meeting advocating for different approaches to the question of whether to impeach. But with Vice President Mike Pence seeming to signal he will not invoke the 25th Amendment, the discussion became more urgent Thursday.

It’s not clear if any Republicans in the House would be willing to support impeachment at this point, but members are so angry about what happened at the Capitol that the political assumptions and norms are not as they have been. “People are pissed,” one Republican source said.

An impeachment floor vote in the middle of next week would give the Senate only a week to hold a trial before Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.

Articles of impeachment adopted by the House would then go to the Senate, where they could be referred to committee or fast-tracked to the Senate floor. A two-thirds vote is required to convict Trump, and if that happened, the Senate could then proceed to a simply majority vote on whether to bar him from holding future federal office.

No president has ever been removed from office through the impeachment process, and no president has been impeached by the House more than once.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., signaled Friday that he's open to potentially convicting Trump and removing him from office if the House impeaches Trump.

"The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because as I've told you I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office," he said on "CBS This Morning." "What he did was wicked."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on the other hand, said that impeachment would "do more harm than good."

"I’m hopeful President-elect Biden sees the damage that would be done from such action," tweeted Graham, who added it was "time to heal and move on."

Clark said that the House "can act quickly when we want to" and suggested that they could bypass certain congressional procedures as Republicans have done in the past with their legislation, and fast-track articles of impeachment to the floor.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., made clear in a statement Thursday night that he supports the immediate impeachment of the president and his removal from office.

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