President-elect Joe Biden Announces Key Nomination to Justice Department in Delaware on Jan. 7
On Wednesday evening (Jan. 13), the Biden-Harris transition team released a statement from Biden on the impeachment of President Trump by the House of Representatives. In the statement, Biden praised the House’s approach and called on Senate leadership to move forward with the impeachment process.
“Today, members of the House of Representatives exercised their constitutional authority to vote to impeach and hold the president accountable …… process continues to the Senate,” Biden said in a statement, adding that “this country also remains constrained by a deadly virus and a brutal economy” and “I am hopeful that Senate leadership will find a way to address the constitutional responsibilities associated with impeachment while working on the nation’s other urgent matters.”
The statement came hours after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement noting that the Senate would begin the process, but that the related vote was apparently too rushed to be implemented next week, and that “even if the Senate process begins this week and acts quickly, a final verdict will not be reached until after President Trump leaves office. “
“The Senate has held three previous presidential impeachment trials. They lasted 83 days, 37 days and 21 days,” the statement said.
McConnell said in the statement that “even the president-elect himself has said that a Jan. 20 handover ceremony is the fastest path to change” and noted that if Congress and the executive branch spent the next seven days focused entirely on facilitating a safe inauguration and transition of power at the inauguration, “it would be in our country’s most beneficial.”
In response, Biden acknowledged in a statement that “everything from confirming key positions (such as the directors of Homeland Security, State, Defense, Treasury and National Intelligence) to getting our vaccine program on track and getting our economy going again (is important). Too many of our fellow Americans have suffered for too long over the past year to postpone these emergency efforts.”
But the statement also declared that the Jan. 6 storming of Congress by demonstrators at the U.S. Capitol was “an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”
“Doors and windows were destroyed. Offices were ransacked. Capitol Hill police officers were murdered. A few days later, another man was killed. Four others died that day in senseless chaos.” “This is an armed rebellion against the United States of America. Those responsible must be held accountable,” Biden noted.
On the same day, McConnell’s office statement said the Senate is expected to be able to vote on impeaching President Trump on Jan. 19, the day before he officially leaves office.
The House of Congress passed a bill to impeach Trump on Wednesday, and the process now moves to the Senate. If the impeachment bill wants to pass the Senate, at least 17 Republican Senate members need to support impeachment.
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