53% of Adults Think There Is Likely Grounds To Impeach Donald Trump

The chart above is from the Strength in Numbers / Verasight Poll -- done between June 17th and 22nd of a nationwide sample of 2,087 adults, with a 2.2 point margin of error. 

55% Of Americans Would Support The Impeachment Of Donald Trump

The chart above is from the Strength in Numbers / Verasight Poll -- done between April 10th and 14th of a nationwide sample of 1,514 adults, with a 2.6 point margin of error.

 

How Trump Could Be Impeached And Removed - After The 2026 Elections

It would clearly be impossible to impeach and remove Donald Trump with the current Congress. But Robert Reich believes it could be done with the next Congress - the one put in place if the 2026 elections go as predicted. He writes: 

Until recently I thought impeaching Trump and convicting him in the Senate was a pipe dream. I was concerned that even talk of impeachment at this stage might distract attention from the affordability crisis brought on by Trump and could even fortify Republican charges of Democratic “extremism.”

No longer. 

The president of the United States is stark-raving mad. He’s a clear and present danger to America and the world. The American public is beginning to see it.

 

We’ve got to do whatever we legally can to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment would be useful if Trump’s Cabinet and key advisers had any integrity, but they don’t. They’re ambitious, unprincipled traitors. 

Which leaves impeachment.

 

You may be skeptical. After all, he’s already been impeached twice, to no avail. How can the third time be the charm?

 

Because it seems likely that Democrats will retake control of the House and the Senate in this fall’s midterm elections (unless Trump prevents free and fair elections). 

And because it’s also possible that there will be enough votes in the Senate starting next January to convict Trump of impeachable offenses and send him packing.

 

I understand how difficult this may seem. Both times Trump was impeached in the House, he was saved by the Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of the Senate (67 senators, assuming all 100 are present) convict in order to remove a president.

 

The highest Senate vote count against Trump came in 2021, and it was 10 votes short of the constitutional requirement. Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict him of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in U.S. Senate history, but it still fell well short of the 67 votes needed to convict Trump. 

So why do I think it’s possible now? Because public sentiment has swung further against Trump now than it was in 2021. And it’s likely to swing even further against him, because he’s going out of his mind at a rapid rate. 

The way to accomplish this is to defeat enough incumbent Republican senators who are up for reelection in 2026 to create a Democratic majority in that chamber, totaling some 54 votes, and pressure at least 13 Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to vote to convict him. 

That’s not impossible. In the upcoming midterms it’s likely that Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins will be replaced by a Democrat (either Janet Mills or Graham Platner). I also assume that former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper will replace Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who’s retiring. 

And I’d like to believe that the good people of Ohio will see the light and reelect Sherrod Brown over Jon Husted, the dullard who was appointed to fill the remainder of JD Vance’s term. 

James Talarico could take the Texas Republican Senate seat now occupied by John Cornyn. In Alaska, I’d put odds on Mary Peltola defeating incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan. In Nebraska, assume that Dan Osborn prevails over incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. And so on. 

Republican senators last elected in 2022 who will be on the ballot in November 2028 include some who are vulnerable because they’re in swing states, such as North Carolina’s Ted Budd and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson; or are in states that could be competitive, such as Indiana’s Todd Young; or are vulnerable to internal party shifts, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy and South Carolina’s Tim Scott. 

Those vulnerabilities mean that their constituents could push them to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment, or else threaten to vote against them in 2028. 

So it’s possible to get the 67 Senate votes, my friends. And it’s absolutely necessary that we try. 

The vast No Kings demonstrations should be considered a prelude to targeting enough Republican Senate incumbents and open races to flip the Senate this fall, and pressuring Republicans up for reelection in 2028 to do their constitutional duty. 

Now is the time to show the size and intensity of America’s commitment to removing Trump from office, for the good of us all.

House GOP's Impeachment Dream Was Based On A Lie

The House GOP's impeachment investigation of President Biden has been pathetic. This week it got worse. Here's how Steve Benen describes it:

It’s not exactly a secret that the impeachment crusade congressional Republicans launched against President Joe Biden has struggled badly. After a year of obsessive investigations, GOP officials simply haven’t uncovered any incriminating evidence against the Democratic incumbent.

It’s reached the point at which some Republicans, frustrated by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s lack of progress, have begun describing the crusade with words and phrases such as “clueless,” “disaster,” and “parade of embarrassments.”

Of course, Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan don’t quite see it that way. On the contrary, when pressed, the far-right congressmen and their allies insist that they still have one important thing: an informant who provided the FBI with damaging information about Biden.

This dimension to the story has long been literally unbelievable, but this week, it got much worse — not for the president, but for those hunting him. NBC News reported:

An FBI informant has been indicted on two counts for allegedly feeding the bureau false information about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign. Alexander Smirnov, 43, disliked Joe Biden and was arrested in Las Vegas after returning from a trip overseas, according to the Justice Department.

The indictment alleges that Smirnov “provided false derogatory information to the FBI” about Biden and his son. The charges stem from the special counsel investigation led by David Weiss — the Trump-appointed prosecutor.

Reporting on the developments shortly after the indictment was announced, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described this as “the most spectacular embarrassment imaginable” for the Republicans going after the president.

It’s important to understand why this is true: For Biden’s GOP detractors in the House and Senate, Smirnov’s claims were foundational. He was the party’s star witness. Sean Hannity’s Fox News show ran with this informant’s claims in at least 85 separate segments last year. The Republicans’ entire “bribery” conspiracy theory was based on the claims this one “informant” made to the FBI.

And now he’s been arrested — for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Mayorkas Impeachment Is Just More Republican Hypocrisy

 

The following is part of a response by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York) to the Republican's attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

On Tuesday, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee completed their rushed, baseless and legally flawed impeachment “investigation” of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for trumped-up, never-used charges relating to the secretary’s efforts to secure our southern border. The irony here, of course, is that the ones who have failed to secure the southern border are, in fact, those same Republicans, operating at the behest of Donald Trump. 

As one senior congressional aide recently put it: “It’s very clear that a large group of Republicans in the Senate and the House no longer want to do border security. … Trump wouldn’t have his issue to run on. That’s what’s going on here: They don’t want to give up that issue.”

Keep in mind, that aide who so succinctly summed up the ongoing border legislation negotiations is a Republican, not a Democrat. 

Democrats, led by Mayorkas and President Joe Biden, have been working around the clock for the past two months with a bipartisan group of senators to address the issues at the border through bipartisan legislation — which Republicans have insisted on as a condition for providing aid to our democratic allies around the world. As Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., has recognized, the border policy package that is near agreement in the Senate would include more Republican priorities than have ever been passed or would ever be achieved under a Republican administration.

In a recent closed-door meeting with his Senate Republican colleagues, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reportedly shared “that the party used to be united in finding a solution” but that the politics “have changed” and Trump “wants the issue [of border security] for his 2024 campaign more than an actual solution.”

This goes beyond your regular election-year political cynicism. For the entire 118th Congress, I have witnessed firsthand House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee using security concerns at the southern border as a political cudgel without making any effort in a divided government to reach across the aisle to actually solve problems through bipartisan legislation. And make no mistake, legislation — not executive action — is the only way to fix our broken immigration system.  

Even within its limited executive authority, the Biden administration has taken several actions to address the situation at the border by streamlining the asylum process while expediting eligibility decisions, preventing unlawful entry between ports of entry and reducing the pressure on the system by allowing people from specific countries suffering from acute humanitarian problems to gain lawful access under certain limiting conditions.   

In response to these efforts, Republican attorneys general around the country sued the Biden administration to prevent the implementation of these policy changes designed to stop the unlawful entry of migrants across the southern border and stem the flow of migrants seeking asylum.

Think about that: The Republicans are working to create and perpetuate the very problems upon which they are basing their impeachment effort of Mayorkas. . . .

To put it simply, Republicans would prefer to have chaos at the border than actually solve our border problems —because they care more about winning elections than finding solutions for the American people.

McCarthy Explains Why Biden Must Be Impeached (SATIRE)

Why has McCarthy started the impeachment process on President Biden? Alexandria Petri helps McCarthy explain in this delicious bit of satire in The Washington Post:

Hi! House Speaker Kevin McCarthy here! Excited to answer any questions you might have about why I just announced an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Yes, you in the front! Ah, why are we impeaching him? Great question! I can’t wait to find out, either! I assume he must have done something pretty bad, if he’s getting impeached! Something dire, I bet! And I will be back to you very soon with what that thing is. He did TBD. And, of course, the terrible crime of TK TK TK! According to this piece of paper that I have here in my hand, he did “Put Something Here Before You Read This To Anyone.” So, I think that speaks volumes. Also he just gives off a corrupt vibe. Am I using that correctly? In the meantime, just close your eyes and imagine the worst thing a president could possibly have done. No, not that. That was fine, because Donald Trump is special and different. But something else bad! Well, I bet we are going to find that Joe Biden did it, or, if not, his son Hunter did. James Comer has been trying for months to investigate what he insists on referring to as the Biden Crime Family, without much luck — maybe this will be the encouragement he needs!

You know how in medicine, sometimes you have to just go in and start taking organs out while you figure out whether there’s a problem and, if so, what it is? Well, this is like that. Please don’t ask me any follow-ups: I am clearly an expert on medicine! I am a male Republican legislator, the best kind of medical expert there is, and one trusted even more than doctors in many states!

All I know is, people keep asking me to impeach him. Impeachment is something we undertake only for serious crimes and misdemeanors, or because the president is a Democrat and that makes us mad. In that case you can get impeached for reasons such as “Marjorie Taylor Greene asked nicely.” No, I’m sorry. We would never undertake something as serious as an impeachment inquiry for frivolous reasons! That would cheapen it and make it political. We would do it only if the fate of the country were at stake, or it was a Tuesday and we were feeling bored.

Look at it another way. Donald Trump got impeached twice. Donald Trump was the best president in our lifetime, and the second-best president in Joe Biden’s lifetime. (This is a joke about Joe Biden’s age!) So, why would Biden get impeached any fewer times than the most perfect president ever to govern? We owe him at least four impeachments.

No, this claim that Joe Biden is corrupt and diabolical in as-yet-unspecified ways has nothing to do with my other line of attack on Joe Biden, that he is too advanced in years to govern and could not conspire his way out of a paper bag. There is no contradiction here.

Yes, what? Oh, no. I expect that this will be covered with a surprising amount of seriousness by the political media. Please headline any coverage of this something like “We Guess Joe Biden Did Something Worth Impeaching And We Can’t Wait To Learn What It Was.” Or “Republicans Impeaching Joe Biden — For Some Reason, We Have To Think.” Don’t put anything in the headline about how it’s “Just For Funsies” or “Because I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.”

Yes, last question! Is the government going to shut down? Great question! I will say what I always say when people ask me that, as they now seem to do every few weeks: AAAAA STOP ASKING ME THAT, YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE. I thought throwing this inquiry into the mix might help! I mean, I undertook it with all seriousness because the country is in danger. (Is it helping, though?) 

Trump's Impeachments Had Evidence - Biden's Does Not

 The following is part of an op-ed by Pamela Paul in The New York Times:

If there was any doubt that the Republican House was no more sophisticated than a preschool playground, last week’s opening of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden settled it with a nasty kick of sand in Democrats’ face.

How else can you describe the pretext for this fishing expedition other than “You started it”? If our guy got embroiled in impeachment and protracted legal proceedings during election season, well then, damn it, so will yours.

Whereas Democrats began the first Trump impeachment inquiry after it was revealed that he tried to extort a political favor from the president of Ukraine in exchange for military aid, and the second impeachment after an insurrection, the Biden inquiry is proceeding with no clear evidence of any misdeeds by the president.

This is just the latest asymmetric tit-for-tat by Republicans.

Even many Republicans in Congress don’t buy into this kind of baloney, as we’ve learned from a series of Washington confessionals and from several Republicans who have questioned whether their side has the goods or if this is the best use of their time. As Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, you could almost see his wispy soul sucked out Dementor-style, joining whatever ghostly remains of Paul Ryan’s abandoned integrity still wander the halls of Congress.

But this isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed this kind of sorry perversion of Democratic precedent. What Democrats do first in good faith, Republicans repeat in bad faith. Time and again, partisan steps that Democrats take with caution are transmogrified into extraordinary retaliation by Republicans.

And so, Al Gore’s challenge of the 2000 election results, ending in his decorous acceptance of the results after a bitter court ruling, is reincarnated as an unhinged insurrection at the Capitol in 2021.

In exchange for the brief moment after the 2004 election when some Democrats claimed irregularities with the Ohio ballot process, we get Republicans taking baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020 to thermonuclear level.

In June 1992, Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on President George H.W. Bush not to nominateany candidate for the Supreme Court until after the fall election, saying it was “fair” and “essential” to keep what could be a sharp political conflict out of the campaign’s final days — as well as the nomination process itself. Of course, with no vacancy at hand, the stakes in that instance were nonexistent. But just after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Mitch McConnell took the extraordinary position that he would not submit any Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama for Senate consideration in an election year. By ignoring that nominee, Merrick Garland, Republicans maintained a conservative majority on the court. McConnell, of course, disingenuously cited the “Biden rule” in his decision. . . .

The misdeeds Trump committed in office clearly warranted an unprecedented double impeachment. They certainly did not warrant this inquiry into Biden.

We are left to hope that the effort will now blow up in the G.O.P.’s face. Considering the shameless stuntathon of today’s House Republicans, this may be the closest we get to what’s fair.

House GOP Wants To Erase History Of Trump Impeachments

Republicans think they can erase history they don't like -- they are wrong!

The following is just part of an excellent op-ed by Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post:

Last week, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) introduced resolutions to “expunge” former president Donald Trump’s two impeachments, “as if such Articles of Impeachment had never passed the full House of Representatives.” Incredibly, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — whose job is to be the adult in the room — said Friday that he supports this initiative, which actual adults can see is ridiculous and obviously futile. . . .

To flatter Trump’s vanity and help him politically, Greene and Stefanik want to create a kind of alternate-universe timeline in which President Donald the Great was never really impeached — because, considering his Greatness, how could he have been? The right-wing media echo chamber will treat the expungement as legitimate, which would make the impeachments somehow illegitimate. And the nation’s information gap, already a canyon, will further widen.

For the record, expunging a presidential impeachment is not a thing. It has never been attempted because it makes no sense. Both of Trump’s House impeachments led to trials in the Senate, as the Constitution instructs. Is the Senate supposed to pretend that those trials, which ended in acquittals, never happened? What about the pages in the Congressional Record that chronicle the impeachment proceedings? Would they be ripped out and destroyed? Sent to Mar-a-Lago for Trump to hoard in one of his cardboard boxes, with his golf shirts and his newspaper clippings?

Trump was impeached in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The key piece of evidence was a record of a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump appeared to condition the release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine on an announcement by Ukrainian officials that they were investigating Biden for alleged corruption.

Greene’s resolution would expunge that impeachment based on the newly revealed FBI document reporting an informant’s claim of rumored corruption by Biden. Greene’s terse draft does not mention that these allegations were examined by Trump’s own Justice Department and judged not credible enough to investigate.

Trump was impeached again in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection, based on his role in instigating the bloody MAGA attempted putsch at the Capitol earlier that month. Stefanik’s resolutionto expunge this second impeachment flirts with, and at times seems to accept, Trump’s “big lie” about the “stolen” election. At one point, for example, Stefanik notes that Trump was the only incumbent president since Grover Cleveland to increase his vote total from his first election yet “seemingly still not [win] reelection.” Those words are not seemingly but actually, and pathetically, craven.

Voters should expunge this useless GOP majority. In 2024, let’s elect a Congress that wants to work, not one that only wants to posture. 

It's Time For Congress To Impeach Justice Clarence Thomas

 

The following is part of a post by Mehdi Hasan at MSNBC.com:

Today, we agree that a judge cannot, and should not, be removed simply because we disagree with their rulings. But we should then also agree that if judges are violating ethics or subject to conflicts of interest, they should in theory be impeached and removed from the bench.

In January, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer profiled Thomas’ wife, Ginni, a longtime conservative operative and lobbyist, and revealed how her lobbying firm was on the payroll of far-right activist Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Gaffney and others submitted an amicus brief to the court in 2017 in support of the Trump administration’s travel ban, arguing that “the challenge of Islam must be confronted.”

Shockingly, Thomas did not recuse himself from the case given the clear financial conflict. He never even disclosed the $200,000 paid to his wife despite being required to report the source of a spouse’s income as part of his annual financial disclosures, according to The New Yorker. Thomas would later join his fellow four conservative justices in voting to uphold Trump’s shameful Muslim ban.

In February, The New York Times Magazine reported that Ginni Thomas served on the board of a secretive right-wing group called CNP Action. In November 2020, it circulated a “November ‘action steps’ document” instructing its members in the days after the election “to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors,” according to the report.

But when former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court to block the House Jan. 6 committee from obtaining hundreds of pages of White House records from the National Archives, Thomas was the sole justice to vote against the House investigators.

Then on Monday, in an interview with a conservative blog, Ginni Thomas admitted to having attended the "Stop the Steal" rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. She admitted to being in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, thereby endorsing that day's Trump-led rally to overturn the election, but she claimed to have left before Trump addressed the crowd because she “got cold.”

To recap: These reports showed that the wife of a Supreme Court justice not only took undisclosed money from an activist who filed a brief in front of the court, but that she was also part of a campaign to try to overturn the 2020 election result and attended the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. And as Ginni Thomas herself helpfully explained in Monday’s interview: “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America.”

Ridiculously, Clarence Thomas wants us to believe he can carry on as an associate justice and remain above the fray. In September, speaking at the University of Notre Dame, he railed against growing criticisms of the court’s partisan behavior. If he really wanted to avoid looking like a politician, why allow his wife’s political activism and income streams to have even the appearance of an impact on his decisions instead of recusing himself?

In fact, unlike others on the court, such as Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Stephen Breyer, who have recused themselves from cases involving family members, Clarence Thomas has never recused himself from a casebecause of Ginni Thomas or her work.

Why should we continue to tolerate his outrageous and unethical behavior?

Most Americans Think Senate Should Have Convicted Trump

 

These charts are from a new ABC News / Ipsos Poll -- done on February 13th and 14th of a national representative probability sample of 547 adults, with a 4.8 point margin of error.

The poll shows that most Americans thought the Senate should have convicted Donald Trump. That was the opinion of about 58% (nearly 6 out of ten people). But the people didn't think the senators made their decision based on the facts, but based on partisan politics. 

Only 23% said the decision was based on facts, while 77% said it was based on partisan politics. And similar percentages of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats agreed with that.

GOP Claims To Love Democracy, But Only 7 Defended It

 The Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict Trump, ten votes short of the required number to make the conviction effective. Only 7 Republicans had the courage to join 48 Democrats and 2 Independents in voting to convict. Those 7 Republican senators were -- Mitt Romney (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Ben Sasse (Nebraska), and Richard Burr (North Carolina).

It seems that a love of democracy and political courage are in short supply in the Republican Party. Most GOP officials consider their own jobs to be more important than our democratic system or the moral values they claim to have. They will have to live with their shame.

GOP Thinks Prosecutors Saved Their Party - Will Still Acquit

The Republican officials know Donald Trump has been disastrous for their party. They are just too cowardly to deal with him, and make sure he doesn't hurt them more in the future. They are afraid they will be primaried in 2022, and lose their cushy job. 

And they appreciate the excellent job the House prosecutors have done in Trump's impeachment trial. They believe those prosecutors made an excellent case, and has sufficiently destroyed Trump in the eyes of the public (except for his most rabid supporters). 

They think those Democratic House members may have done the job they were afraid to do -- cleanse their party of Donald Trump. But don't expect them to participate in that. Those GOP cowards will still vote to acquit!

Here's how the GOP hypocrisy is described by Alexander Bolton in The Hill:

Senate Republicans, including those who do not plan to vote to convict former President Trump, say this week’s impeachment trial has effectively ended any chance of him becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

From the viewpoint of some Republican senators, the compelling case presented by House prosecutors carries a silver lining: It means they likely won’t have to worry about Trump running for president again in three years, while at the same time eroding his influence in party politics more generally.

Several Republican senators became irate watching videos of the violence and chaos inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, including footage of police officers being called “pigs” and “traitors” and one officer screaming as he was crushed by rioters battering a police line.

Interspersed with the traumatic scenes were clips of Trump urging his supporters to march to the Capitol, warning them “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” and telling them “we love you; you’re very special” shortly after the attack. 

“It just makes you realize what an asshole Donald Trump is," said one GOP senator after watching day two of the House managers' presentation.

The lawmaker suggested that Democrats may ultimately help the GOP by sidelining Trump.

"Unwittingly, they are doing us a favor. They're making Donald Trump disqualified to run for president" even if he is acquitted, the senator said. 

Other Republican senators, even those who have indicated they will vote to acquit, say it would be a good thing if the impeachment trial helps distance the party from Trump, who has thoroughly dominated GOP politics over the past five years.