possible message that, as John Adams said, we are a “government of laws, and not of men.”[1] Impeachment is a necessary measure to make sure that no President ever again attempts to incite his supporters to take unlawful action and overturn the will of the people. Indeed, the Constitution prohibits certain government officials who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding “any office … under the United States.”[2]
Impeachment is appropriate in the wake of this attack on the Capitol. The House has a solemn obligation to issue the appropriate charges and passing this article of impeachment preserves the ability of the Senate to take up the charges as it sees fit. This impeachment does not seek to undo an election. Rather, it seeks to vindicate the most recent election, protect it from a President who defies it, and protect future elections from presidents who may try to do the same. This impeachment is an essential statement about our Constitution and our democracy.
Courts across the country have rejected his false claims of fraud—and not just on procedural grounds. In Arizona, for example, the court found no fraud, no misconduct, no illegal votes, and confirmed that President-elect Biden won.[3] Likewise, in Wisconsin, the court heard President Trump’s claims on the merits and rejected them.[4] Moreover, hand counts and hand audits in multiple states confirmed the accuracy of the vote. Other courts have ruled that the alleged claims of rigged voting machines pushed by President Trump and others are “implausible.”[5] Those outcomes are part of the over 60 post-election cases decided adversely to President Trump and his allies. Yet he falsely and repeatedly screamed fraud, culminating in an appeal to his supporters to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6th—where he told them to march to the Capitol and repeated his baseless claim that “we won in a landslide.”
President Trump did not just falsely assert that he won the Presidency. He went much further. He pressured state officials to change the results and “find” more votes. He encouraged state officers not to exercise their ministerial duties. He told his supporters to assemble in Washington, D.C. on January 6th—the day of the Joint Session. He promised that it would be “wild.” President Trump’s goal was to disrupt the Joint Session of Congress that was meeting to formally count the electoral votes in an election that his opponent won.
President Trump also encouraged his Vice President to violate his own oath and claim unilateral authority to reject the votes of the Electoral College in an unconstitutional effort to declare President Trump the victor. Vice President Pence rightly rejected this view in his January 6, 2021 letter: “When disputes concerning a presidential election arise, under Federal law, it is the
- ↑ Papers of John Adams vol. 2 p. 314, Massachusetts Historical Society, available at http://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/PJA02p314.
- ↑ U.S. Const. amend. XIV § 3.
- ↑ Bob Christie & Jacques Billeaud, Arizona Supreme Court upholds election challenge dismissal, AP (Jan. 5, 2021); Laura Gomez, Judge: No fraud, misconduct, illegal votes in Maricopa County’s 2020 election, Arizona Mirror (Dec. 4, 2020).
- ↑ Adam Brewster, Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects Trump campaign effort to toss ballots just before electors meet, CBS News (Dec. 14, 2020).
- ↑ Jeremy Duda, Attorney for Sec of State: ‘Kraken’ lawsuit alleges ‘utterly implausible fraud’, Arizona Mirror (Dec. 8, 2020).
48
