A Texas Democrat is vowing to introduce new articles of impeachment against President Trump before year’s end.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) declined to say how many articles he will craft or what actions of the president he will target. But he’s promising to force a vote on his resolutions before Congress leaves Washington for the December holidays.
“It’s not enough to file them and not have a vote on them,” Green told reporters just outside the Capitol. “We will bring those articles of impeachment to the floor as a privileged resolution. And there will be a vote on them. And then let the chips fall where they may.”
The effort has no chance of passing in a House chamber controlled by Trump’s Republican allies. But Green says he views the campaign as one of responsibility to constitutional order.
“On our watch, we refuse to allow the demise of our democracy,” he said.
It’s hardly the first time Green has sought to remove Trump from office. In the first year of the president’s first term, Green was the first Democrat to force impeachment articles to the floor — long before Democratic leaders were on board — accusing Trump of stirring racial tensions in the wake of the 2017 march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.
More recently, in June of this year, Green forced a vote on a single impeachment article, which accused Trump of abusing presidential powers by launching military strikes against Iran without congressional approval. The measure was scuttled in a lopsided vote, 344-79, which saw most Democrats — including all the top Democratic leaders — siding with Republicans to put it to bed.
Green said he has not been in touch with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) or any other Democratic leaders about his latest plans.
“The Constitution has no mandate for conferring with leadership, or quite frankly, anybody else,” he said.
Democratic leaders, who impeached Trump twice in his first term, have been wary of new impeachment efforts, which have only energized the president’s base. They’re pushing a different strategy that attacks the president over issues of affordability and charges of corruption — places where they see Trump as vulnerable as they seek to flip control of the lower chamber in next year’s midterm elections.
Green, for his part, said that’s too long to wait, given the “dastardly deeds” he says the president is committing “on a daily basis.”
“I’d love to have a majority. But the Constitution does not have a scintilla of a word in it indicating that you have to have a majority to impeach. It’s just not there,” Green said.
“Impeach, convict and remove is the remedy because the Supreme Court has given [Trump] immunity.”