Democratic Congressman James Clyburn has said that impeachment proceedings could go ahead soon if Vice-President Mike Pence and the cabinet do not remove Donald Trump from office via the 25th Amendment.
Speaking on CNN, he said: “I believe in the next six to seven days we can impeach but not remove.”
The reason he said that is because while the Democrats can impeach Trump in the House of Representatives when things move to the Senate they get more complicated for the Democrats in two key ways:
- There's not much time to hold a Senate trial before he leaves office anyway
- It will be difficult for them to muster the two-thirds vote required to actually remove him from the presidency
However there are signs that some Republicans could support the move.
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska said earlier he would consider articles of impeachment because Trump had "disregarded his oath of office".
