Mike Pence rejects calls to oust Trump and opens the door to impeachment
Democratic-dominated House of Representatives votes in favor of using the 25th amendment, despite the vice president's refusal
US Vice President Mike Pence rejected calls by Democratic MPs to remove Donald Trump on the basis of the Constitution's 25th amendment. Pence's refusal, expressed in a letter to President of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, was announced hours before the lower house put to vote, on Tuesday night, a resolution in which the vice president was formally requested to invoke the 25th amendment to declare the position vacant, on the grounds that Trump is unable to fulfill his duties and obligations. Democrats have given Pence a 24-hour deadline, and if they don't, they intend to vote on Wednesday for the second impeachment of the president, and then wait for the Senate to remove him, when seven days remain before Trump's term ends. and the inauguration of Democrat Joe Biden as the new White House holder.
"I did not yield to pressure to exercise power beyond my constitutional authority," said Pence in his letter to Pelosi, "and I will not now yield to the efforts of the House of Representatives to play political games at such a grave moment in the life of our nation" . With the possibility of a dismissal via the 25th amendment being rejected before even starting the deadline given by the deputies, the path to impeachment remains open.
Pence thus displays a final gesture of loyalty to Trump. Or perhaps a scrupulous zeal for the limits of your position, as you say in your letter. Among the limited constitutional duties of the vice president - a single nationwide elective office, in addition to the president himself - is that of evoking the 25th amendment. This is done by informing the leaders of the two houses of Congress in writing that the president, in the opinion of the majority of the cabinet, is "unable to fulfill the powers and obligations of his office", which leads the vice president himself to assume these duties. powers and obligations as acting president. The challenge thrown at Pence by congressmen called into question a relationship, close to servility, that has permeated these turbulent four years since the two politicians made up the Republican slate for the 2016 presidential election ―repeated in 2020. But this is a relationship which, in recent weeks, has cooled remarkably.
If the probability that Pence decided to betray Trump in the final stretch, making history as an ephemeral 46th president of the United States, was already remote, she practically died out on Monday night. Trump and Pence met in the Oval Office and, according to Administration sources, pledged to continue working together "for the remainder of their term". The fact that the meeting is the first interaction between the two since the invasion of the Capitol last Wednesday, reveals the unusual deterioration of Trump's confidence in one of his most faithful squires.
The cooling started on December 15, when someone convinced Trump that Pence was his last hope for reversing the election results he lost on November 3. The possibility of the vice president challenging the electoral college's vote count in Congress became an obsession for the president. Pence studied the possibility with constitutionalists, who agreed to consider it unfeasible. The vice president's team learned, according to The Washington Post, that Trump's lawyers were even preparing a lawsuit against him. Pence relying on Justice Department lawyers to neutralize this action, according to the Post, made Trump even more furious.
The pressure on Pence included a phone call on the morning of January 6, the fateful date on which the vice president would preside over the Senate for the ritual of certifying election results. After Pence's denial, the president publicly charged his deputy. "Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what he should have done to protect our country and the Constitution," he tweeted at 1:24 pm that day (local time). By then, the Trumpist hordes, spurred on by the president, had already taken Congress by storm. "Where's Pence?" Shouted the mutineers. The vice president had been removed from the Senate floor and was hiding in a secret location on the Capitol. The president didn't call Pence to see if he was okay. Not that day or the next.
The president has announced that he will not be attending the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next Wednesday. Pence, however, confirmed that he will be there. The vice president has stood by Trump's side in every crisis. He even managed to dodge the blows ahead of the White House's erratic response to the coronavirus crisis, moving deftly through the schism between science and the president's gaffes. Now, his detachment from the Trumpist bases creates unknowns about his poorly disguised presidential aspirations.
