On behalf of the OPCMIA’s 56,000 members, I applaud the House’s courageous bipartisan vote today to impeach President Donald Trump.
President Trump incited an armed insurrection on January 6th, an attempt to violently overturn the legitimate results of a free and fair election to keep himself in power in direct violation of his oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Five people died in that seditious act as the U.S. Capitol — the citadel of our democracy — was overrun by his hooligans.
That alone is sufficient to merit impeachment. But there is far more. During the Capitol siege, President Trump reportedly watched the violence gleefully on live television and refused for many hours to take the calls of members of Congress fearful for their lives, pleading for him to call off the hordes and call in the National Guard. Even his own Vice President was placed in harm’s way as a result.
President Trump also deserves impeachment because he tried to bully the Georgia Secretary of State to fraudulently declare him the winner of the state (“I just want to find 11,780 votes”). And because he lied for the past 10 weeks that the election was somehow stolen from him, despite the fact that zero evidence of fraud was found, that President-Elect Biden received over 7 million more votes than Trump, and that he lost the Electoral College by a 306 – 232 margin. These lies were put in the service of an attempted coup d’etat and they were designed to destroy the very fabric of our democracy.
I urge the U.S. Senate to swiftly convict President Trump, ban him from ever holding public office in the future, and deny him the benefits retired presidents normally receive. He has proven himself an enemy of democracy, an enemy of the Constitution, and a clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America.
Daniel E. Stepano
General President
