House Dem pledges another vote to impeach Trump

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) pledged Tuesday that the House vote he forced last week on impeaching President Trump won’t be the last.

The House overwhelmingly rejected Green’s measure to consider articles of impeachment against Trump. Most Democrats joined with Republicans to table the resolution, but a total of 58 Democrats, including Green, backed impeachment.

Green did not specify when he would try to force a another vote, but vowed it was coming.

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“There will be another vote to impeach this president. There will be another vote because I will not stand by and watch this country, the country I love, be brought into shame and disrepute because of a person who is unfit to hold the office of president,” Green said in a House floor speech.

Green’s articles of impeachment state that Trump has “brought disrepute, contempt, ridicule and disgrace on the presidency” and “sown discord among the people of the United States.”

The articles cite Trump’s equivocating response to the violent clash between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.; criticisms of NFL players kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality; disparate treatment of hurricane victims in Puerto Rico; and personal attacks against Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus alongside Green.

“When you speak ill of persons who are exercising their constitutional right to protest, and you call their mothers dogs, when you call them SOBs, you are creating harm to society, especially when it emanates from the highest office in the land,” Green said in his floor speech.

“History will judge us all.”

House Democratic leaders do not support impeachment at this point, citing the ongoing special counsel investigation of whether the Trump campaign was involved with the Russian government’s effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the second-ranking House Democrat, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), voted to table Green’s resolution last week.

While Pelosi and Hoyer acknowledged that there are “legitimate questions” about Trump’s fitness for office, they maintained that “now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment.”

The 58 Democrats who voted in favor of Green’s resolution included other lawmakers who have agitated for impeachment, like Reps. Maxine Waters (Calif.) and Brad Sherman (Calif.).

Sherman introduced an article of impeachment in July alleging that Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey amid the investigation into Russia’s election meddling.

Green and five other Democrats also unveiled articles of impeachment last month that accuse Trump of obstructing justice, violating the foreign emoluments clause barring the president from taking gifts from foreign governments and undermining the judiciary and press.

The other lawmakers in support of Green’s resolution ranged from fellow Congressional Black Caucus members, progressives and a handful of senior Democratic leadership allies who haven’t been vocal about impeachment.

Four Democrats, Reps. Joaquin Castro (Texas), Marc Veasey (Texas), Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.) and Terri Sewell (Ala.), meanwhile, voted “present.”