Members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet have been discussing use of the 25th Amendment to the constitution to declare him unfit for office after the president encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol and many of them ran wild inside the seat of legislative power.
It is a provision never used for the removal of a president against his will and faces extraordinary burdens to take effect.
Nevertheless, CBS News reported that Trump cabinet members had been discussing the idea.
“I’m talking about actual members of the Cabinet,” said Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan.
The 25th Amendment, which also governs a president who voluntarily relinquishes power on a temporary basis, requires that the vice president and ‘a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide’ inform the Congress that the president is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’
Several Trump cabinet members serve on an ‘acting’ basis and have not been confirmed by the Senate, lowering the number from the 16 threshold. A post election purge took out the Defense secretary, and Attorney General Bill Barr left before Christmas after a clash with Trump.
In an extraordinary statement, Jay Timmons, head of the National Association of Manufacturers, called what happened ‘mob rule’ and termed it ‘dangerous.’
‘Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy,’ he said. Timmons is a former top aide to a member of the Senate leadership. He used to run the National Republican Senatorial Committee years ago.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats wrote Pence urging him to invoke the amendment. ‘Even in his video announcement this afternoon, President Trump revealed that he is not mentally sound and is still unable to process and accept the results of the 2020 election,’ they wrote.
‘President Trump’s willingness to incite violence and social unrest to overturn the election results by force clearly meet this standard,’ they wrote. ‘so too are his recent tweets, which Twitter has since deleted, saying the election was ‘stolen’ and that today’s riots ‘are the things and events that happen.’
‘For the sake of our democracy, we emphatically urge you to invoke the 25th Amendment and begin the process of removing President Trump from power,’ they concluded.
The 25th Amendment talk came after it was revealed that the acting Pentagon chief and chair of the joint chiefs of staff spoke with Vice President Mike Pence before activating National Guard to secure the Capitol.CBS News
