Washington, Jan 9 (UNI) US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that the House would move ahead with the process to impeach President Donald Trump for encouraging a mob that stormed the Capitol if he did not resign immediately.
"It is the hope of members that the President will immediately resign. But if he does not, I have instructed the Rules Committee to be prepared to move forward with Congressman Jamie Raskin’s 25th Amendment legislation and a motion for impeachment," Pelosi said in a statement on Friday.
"Accordingly, the House will preserve every option – including the 25th Amendment, a motion to impeach or a privileged resolution for impeachment,” she said after the House Democratic Caucus had an hours-long discussion on the issue.
On Wednesday, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building in a bid to prevent Congress from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory. The attack came after Trump urged his followers to "fight" to reverse the outcome of the fraud-ridden vote - allegations rejected by every US election security agency.
Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said the impeachment proceedings should begin immediately. "Let's do it right now," she said.
Congressman Kaiali'i Kahele said he fully support removing Trump from office, either by invoking the 25th Amendment or bringing forth articles of impeachment against him.
"We cannot have a sitting president in office who incites violence among the people, or who tries to upend the American people's democratic process and right to a just election...his remarks in front of an agitated mob of his supporters that roused civil indignancy at the grounds of the US Capitol are unforgivable," he said.
Every day Trump remains in the White House is another day America is unsafe, Kahele said.
Kahele is a co-sponsor of two resolutions of impeachment authored by fellow US members of Congress -- one sponsored by Representatives David Cicilline, Ted Lieu, and Jamie Raskin; and the other by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Meanwhile, following the Capitol Hill violence siege, most of the social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Facebook along with YouTube and Snapchat temporarily suspended all of Mr Trump's accounts on Wednesday, with Facebook blocking it indefinitely and Twitter suspending the account of his presidential campaign after banning him permanently.
Twitter had also deleted new tweets, posted by Trump, on official government account @POTUS.
The latest move came soon after he sent out a tweet with a "statement from President Trump" accusing Twitter of "banning free speech" and coordinating with "the Democrats and the Radical Left" to silence him.
Trump, who lost the November 3 elections, would be succeeded by Joe Biden on January 20 as mandated by the Constitution. The incumbent President, however, has denied to attend the latter's inauguration on the aforementioned date.
UNI XC-RHK