KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Some cabinet members, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had informal discussions about the 25th Amendment and President Trump, considering some scenarios to possibly remove him from office, according to multiple outlets.
But with the clock ticking on Trump's presidency, which ends with Joe Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, no final decision has been made.
Beginning in the hours after the chaos unfolded Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol, the number of lawmakers calling for Trump's removal via the 25th Amendment continued to grow Thursday.
Other congressional leaders considered a new round of impeachment hearings.
"If the vice president and cabinet do not act, the congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment," Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said.
The Democrat-controlled House voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, but the Republican-controlled Senate acquitted him in February 2020.
The 25th Amendment is a completely different avenue for removing a president. Section 4 requires the vice president and the majority of the cabinet to send a note to Congress declaring the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."
Rep. Sharice Davids, the only Democrat in Congress from Kansas, was among those urging the President's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment on Wednesday night.
"I'm not surprised that are calls from Nancy Pelosi and (Senate Minority Leader Sen.) Chuck Schumer to remove the President of the United States from office," Johnson County Republican Party Chairman Fabian Shepard said. "There were calls before the man was sworn in."
Shepard denounced the violence, but he declined to say if Trump should be removed before Biden's Inauguration Day in less than two weeks.
"These are individuals acting on their own accord," Shepard said of the rioters, who were part of a deadly siege in the Capitol during the Electoral College certification proceedings. "I don't feel any better about this than the things that we saw transpire throughout the other part of the year, when we saw civil unrest, when we saw violence against law enforcement officers."
But some Republicans have come out in support of transferring the powers of the presidency to Vice President Mike Pence, who would take over in the event the 25th Amendment was invoked.
"All indications are the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty, or even his own, but from reality," Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, said in a video he posted Thursday morning on Twitter.
It’s with a heavy heart I am calling for the sake of our Democracy that the 25th Amendment be invoked. My statement: pic.twitter.com/yVyQrYcjuD
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) January 7, 2021
President-elect Joe Biden said he will leave it up to the current Cabinet to make any decision on Trump's removal, but the plan seems to be to let the clock run out on Jan. 20, according to a CNBC report.
