Less than a year after the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, Nancy Pelosi has threatened to launch formal proceedings to remove him from office yet again, after he egged on a furious mob that violently took over the Capitol Building. “This is an emergency of the highest magnitude,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “While there’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America.” The House Speaker said the best course of action would be for Mike Pence to put Trump’s removal from office into motion under the 25th Amendment. Failing that, Pelosi said Friday that the Democratically controlled House would take up the mantle through impeachment—a move backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—if the president didn’t resign “immediately.”
The notion that Trump could be impeached for a second time might seem far-fetched, particularly given the time constraint. But Democrats say they’re prepared to move quickly. “Leadership moves in a very coordinated and disciplined way when they are motivated to,” a Democratic congressional staffer told me. “I have no doubt in my mind that the House can take decisive action to make our democracy safer in very short order.” A senior Democratic staffer told me the House could move on impeachment as early as Monday, and Congresswoman Katherine Clark, the assistant House Speaker, said a vote could come as early as the middle of next week.
Congressman Jamie Raskin—a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a constitutional law professor—will have a front-row seat to the rapidly unspooling events of the next week. Raskin, who suffered a personal tragedy in December with the death of his son, and who was on the grounds of the Capitol as it was forcefully occupied by Trump supporters, nevertheless took the time to discuss the intricacies of the 25th Amendment and what a second impeachment of Donald Trump might look like.
Vanity Fair: Can you explain the 25th Amendment?
Congressman Raskin: The 25th Amendment is all about the preservation of the republic and the continuity of government. That’s why it’s in there. It was added to the Constitution in 1967, in the nuclear age, with the understanding that it could be extremely dangerous to have a vacuum or an unqualified person sitting in the Oval Office. And if you go back and you look at what Birch Bayh and Robert F. Kennedy were talking about, it was about the central importance of protecting the American system of government against destabilizing dynamics in the presidency.
How would it work in a situation like this, particularly as a number of Trump cabinet officials resign?
There are two big misconceptions about the 25th Amendment. The first is that it’s all about the removal of a president who is unable to discharge the powers and duties of office. That is section four, but the first three sections deal with other problems in terms of vacancies and instability in the presidency. Section one is all about if the presidency is vacant, the vice president becomes president, and that was not clear before. It was clear that the vice president exercised presidential powers, but it wasn’t clear that he actually became the president. Section two is all about filling a vice presidential vacancy by presidential nomination and then majority votes in both houses of Congress. The third section is about a president voluntarily transferring the powers of his or her office to the vice president in the event of a temporary vacancy. This too has happened numerous times, usually about the famous presidential colon. It’s happened during a number of colonoscopies. It happened during President Reagan’s colorectal surgery. But that is done voluntarily by the president. And it ends when the president is able to resume his or her duties.
Section four is the part that is about a president who for whatever reason—physical or mental—is unable to recognize his or her own inability to successfully discharge the powers and duties of office. So that’s what is coming to focus today, but understand that that’s part of a broader system of rules, which have been activated many times in our history. The other major misconception is that in section four, it requires the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to act. That is one of two ways it can be activated. The other is that the vice president and a majority of a body set up by Congress determined that there is a presidential inability to discharge the powers and duties of office.
You previously introduced legislation that would set up such a body.
Right. It’s pretty self-evident who would be on the body. We would want former high-ranking officials in the executive branch, including former presidents of both parties; former attorneys general and secretaries of defense and state; former surgeons general from both parties; and then we would want expert medical personnel.
The reason this is all over the news right now is because we just saw the president of the United States inciting a mob that engaged in a violent insurrection and attempted takeover and perhaps a coup against the Congress of the United States while we were engaged in counting Electoral College votes and effectuating the peaceful transfer of power. It’s hard to think of a more egregious departure from the president’s obligation to faithfully execute the laws of the United States and to uphold the Constitution.
If the removal process outlined in the 25th Amendment were to be completed, would the vice president step into the role of the president?
Yes. None of this happens without the participation of the vice president, and the vice president is the sole exerciser of presidential powers during the period of disability. Now, the president can come forward and say at any point that the disability no longer exists. And at that point the vice president and the body set up by Congress or the cabinet, or both of those entities, could act to overrule the president. At that point Congress would have 21 days within which to act.