Members Of Congress Allegedly Holding Secret Discussions About Removing Trump From Office [Report]
After President Donald Trump marked his first hundred days in office, members of the House and the Senate are allegedly holding private conversations about the possibility of removing him from office, a report claims. The lawmakers, according to the report by the New Yorker‘s Evan Osnos, are assessing Trump’s chances of lasting a full term amid ongoing scandals and congressional investigations into alleged connections with Russia. They are also considering how he could be removed from office if the need arises.
According to Osnos, sources with knowledge of allegedly ongoing talks said that members of Congress are looking at how Trump could be removed by impeachment or through the 25th Amendment which allows for a president to be removed if he is found unfit to continue performing his duties. Section IV of the 25th Amendment allows a majority of the president’s Cabinet and his vice president, or a body, such as a panel of medical experts appointed by Congress, to declare the president unfit and depose him.
Members of Congress 'holding secret conversations about removing Donald Trump from office' | The Independent https://t.co/GARzB441UU
— Emmy Saez (@emmysaez11) May 5, 2017
“Whenever 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, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
How Trump Could Get Fired https://t.co/MiLtODPASw via @eosnos
— leighdale (@leighdale51) May 5, 2017
However, a two-thirds in the House and the Senate is required to uphold the decision to remove the president within 21 days; otherwise power and authority of office transfers back to the president automatically.
“This is a conversation that people are having around the dinner table. It is [a discussion] people have at the office, members of Congress are talking about it in private and the question is very simple: is this a president who is able to do the job and is able to go the distance?” Osnos told Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word.
“This is a president who is beset by doubts of a completely different order of any president we’ve seen as long as we’ve been looking at this question,” Osnos said, according to the Independent. “The truth is that there are people having an active conversation about whether or not he’ll last.”
Osnos also noted that some members of the Congress involved in the alleged discussions warned that Trump could spark a “constitutional crisis” by refusing to co-operate with ongoing congressional investigations into his alleged links with Russian intelligence operatives who interfered in the 2016 general election. Others admitted that they expected Trump to refuse to cooperate, according to Osnos.
'How Donald Trump Could Get Fired': The 25th Amendment https://t.co/sTttCB1rhe via @msnbc
— nancy bowen (@lavenderblue27) May 5, 2017
Already some observers are assessing the chances that Trump would be removed from office based on the current status of ongoing investigations into his alleged inappropriate contacts with Russia. Osnos claimed that he spoke with several members of the House and Senate, officials, and some Trump aides, and many agreed that the chances of impeachment were considerably high.
William Kristol, a former chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle under President George H.W. Bush, estimated the chances of Trump being removed from office as high as 50 percent.
“It’s somewhere in the big middle ground between a 1 per cent [chance] and 50. It’s some per cent. It’s not nothing.”
“I believe that invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is no fantasy but an entirely plausible tool — not immediately, but well before 2020,” said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and constitutional expert.
The Inquisitr reported in March that Tribe argued Trump could be impeached if he is found to have falsely accused former President Barack Obama of “wiretapping” his Trump Tower phones during the 2016 general election period. According to Tribe, Trump could be impeached if he is found to have acted with reckless disregard for truth and used his position to accuse Obama of an impeachable felony while pretending that he obtained the information from official security sources, the Inquisitr reported.
[Featured Image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
