Nancy Pelosi said she had spoken to the US military’s most senior officer about taking precautions to prevent an “unstable president from initiating military hostilities or . . . ordering a nuclear strike”.
The conversation between the speaker of the House of Representatives and General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came as Democrats intensified their efforts to forcibly remove President Donald Trump from office after violent mobs of his supporters swarmed the US Capitol.
“This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Ms Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democratic colleagues.
She added: “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.”
A spokesman for Gen Milley, David Butler, confirmed the call had taken place. “Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the chairman. He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority,” he said.
The call between Ms Pelosi and Gen Milley took place as Democrats said they would press ahead with efforts to impeach Mr Trump, after the prospect of removing him from office by invoking the 25th amendment appeared to recede.
In her letter, Ms Pelosi said there had been “growing momentum around the invocation of the 25th amendment”, which would allow Mike Pence, vice-president, and a majority of the cabinet to remove Mr Trump from the White House.
But she said that Mr Pence had declined to discuss invoking the amendment and that if he continued to stonewall then the Democrats would try to impeach the president. “If the president does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action,” she wrote.
Katherine Clark, a Democratic congresswoman from Massachusetts and a member of Ms Pelosi’s team, told CNN that House Democrats would “move forward with impeachment . . . as early as mid next week”.
The push to impeach comes despite Mr Trump conceding for the first time on Thursday night that Joe Biden would become US president later this month.
Amid a number of resignations from the White House and mounting pressure from fellow Republicans, the president abruptly shifted his tone in a short video during which he accused violent demonstrators of “defiling the seat of American democracy” and said those who broke the law “will pay”.
But by Friday morning, the president returned to Twitter — from which he had been briefly banned in the aftermath of the Capitol assault — saying: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”
Breaking with tradition, Mr Trump also said he would not attend Mr Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
Mr Trump was impeached in December 2019, when the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved two charges, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, relating to the president’s overtures to the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Mr Biden and his son Hunter. The president was later acquitted in a trial in the Republican-held Senate.
While Democrats held on to the House following November’s elections with a diminished majority, they likely have enough votes to impeach Mr Trump for a second time.
That would pile pressure on Republicans in the Senate, who are poised to lose control of the upper chamber following two run-off races in Georgia earlier this week, in which Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff ousted Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
Two-thirds of the Senate would need to vote to convict Mr Trump in order for him to be removed from office. However, there would be little time to conduct a trial before Mr Biden takes office.
Mitt Romney, the senator from Utah, was the only Republican to break ranks last time, voting to convict Mr Trump on abuse of power. But after Wednesday’s events, there were some indications that sentiment within the president’s party was shifting.
Ben Sasse, a Republican senator from Nebraska, told CBS News on Friday morning that he would “definitely consider” any articles of impeachment drawn up by Democrats.
“I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office,” Mr Sasse added. “What he did was wicked.”
Mr Trump addressed throngs of supporters on the Washington Mall hours before they stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, saying: “We will never give up. We will never concede.”
The violent clashes at the Capitol resulted in the deaths of five people, including a US Capitol police officer. Ms Pelosi on Friday said she ordered the flags at the Capitol to be flown at half-mast in honour of the officer, Brian Sicknick, who had been attempting to push back rioters.
Mr Trump initially responded to Wednesday’s siege by telling his supporters: “We love you, you are very special . . . I know how you feel, but go home and go in peace.”
Betsy DeVos, education secretary, and Elaine Chao, transportation secretary, were among the members of the president’s administration who quit their posts with less than two weeks to go until Mr Biden’s inauguration.
Their resignations cast doubt on whether the 25th amendment could be invoked, given a majority of the president’s cabinet would need to support his removal.
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2021-01-08 17:06:43Z
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