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House Democrats Threaten Impeachment Unless Trump Resigns; Questions Mount over Security Failure at Capitol Riot; More Capitol Rioters Identified and Charged; Johns Hopkins University: Over 20,000 COVID-19 Deaths in U.S. in 2021; Health Experts Fear U.S. Not Doing Enough to Halt Fast-Spreading COVID-19 Variant; Moderna Vaccine Authorized for Use in Britain; Trump Could Be First President Impeached Twice. Aired 2-2:45a ET

Aired January 09, 2021 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Growing calls this hour to impeach the U.S. president. Democrats say they're ready to take action as Donald Trump remains defiant as ever.

And as refrigerated trucks turn into makeshift morgues, Joe Biden says he will get Americans vaccinated as soon as possible. But it comes with a risk.

Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM, everyone. I'm Michael Holmes.

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HOLMES: The pressure piling on Donald Trump at the moment, resign or become the first U.S. president in history to face a second impeachment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats are ready to fast-track proceedings if President Trump does not resign now. There is even growing support among some Republican lawmakers.

It has been three days now since crowds of pro Trump rioters stormed Capitol Hill in an active insurrection that led to at least 5 deaths. We are seeing new video of how chaotic and terrifying that riot was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES (voice-over): This video shows rioters screaming, smashing windows, outnumbering the police officers, guarding the door to the Speaker's lobby. Later the video shows an officer firing his weapon, killing a rioter who was trying to get through those glass doors.

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HOLMES: There are just 11 days left now in the Donald Trump presidency. House Democrats say the threat he poses is too great to ignore. That is why they are pushing for impeachment. Jim Acosta reports.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two days after he incited a bloody siege at the U.S. Capitol, Donald Trump is facing the head-spinning prospect of becoming the first U.S. president to be impeached twice. His sudden commitment to an orderly transition may be too little, too late.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Good afternoon.

ACOSTA (voice-over): House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are now marching toward impeachment proceedings against the president, all the while making sure Mr. Trump doesn't do anything drastic.

As Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues, "I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike."

House Democrats say they're ready to move quickly.

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA): We're not just doing this for the next 12 or 13 days. We're doing this for generations to come. And if we are not willing to state that the acts by the president of the United States to incite domestic terrorism and insurrection is an impeachable offense, then nothing is an impeachable offense.

ACOSTA (voice-over): If the House impeaches the president, some Senate Republicans, who didn't vote to convict and remove Mr. Trump the last time around, say they may have had a change of heart.

SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because, as I have told you, I believe that the president has disregarded his oath of office.

ACOSTA (voice-over): White House advisers say there is zero chance the president will resign, with one source telling CNN, quote, "He doesn't think he did anything wrong."

But even former White House officials say Mr. Trump should consider stepping down.

ALYSSA FARAH, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: They allowed this myth, this lie, to take a life of its own, that the election might be overturned. When the moment called for leadership, he did not do the right thing and lives were lost because of it. ACOSTA (voice-over): Some of the president's top enablers are also facing calls to resign, like Republican senator Ted Cruz, who released a statement, condemning the violence at the Capitol, saying, "Now we must come together and put this anger and division behind us.

"We must stand side by side as Americans. We must continue to defend our Constitution and the rule of law."

That's after he was umping up voters in Georgia, likening them to Revolutionary soldiers.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): You are patriots, just like the patriots gathered at Bunker Hill, just like the patriots gathered at Valley Forge.

ACOSTA (voice-over): Other Trump loyalists are feeling the wrath of the Trump base. After GOP senator Lindsey Graham told Mr. Trump to give up his election fight ...

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): And when it's over, it is over. It is over.

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ACOSTA (voice-over): -- Trump supporters were screaming, "Traitor," as he walked through the airport.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lindsey Graham, you are a traitor to the country. You know it was rigged. It's going to be like this forever, wherever you go, for the rest of your life.

ACOSTA (voice-over): Mr. Trump signaled he won't congratulate President-Elect Joe Biden on his Inauguration Day, tweeting he won't be going, giving the Capitol a break from having the instigator-in- chief on hand for the transfer of power.

TRUMP: And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

ACOSTA: And the White House released a statement on the pending impeachment proceedings saying, quote, "A politically motivated impeachment against a president with 12 days remaining in his term will only serve to further divide our great country."

Of course, Democrats don't see it that way; they see these proceedings as absolutely necessary -- Jim Acosta, CNN, the White House.

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HOLMES: And President Trump has lost access to his favorite means of communication, Twitter banning Mr. Trump's personal account, saying keeping him on the platform risks, quote, "further incitement of violence." Brian Stelter with more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is hard to imagine President Trump without a Twitter account. Those two words, Trump and Twitter, have been linked together for the past four years. He has relied on his Twitter account to mobilize his followers, to share incendiary information, to demean the American news media.

But all of that has been taken away from the outgoing president. Twitter has banned him. They call it a permanent suspension. It is a ban. This is the first time any world leader is known to have been banned from Twitter.

It is a moment in Silicon Valley history and also a moment in political history. And one has to wonder how Trump is reacting, how he is feeling about this decision.

The White House did release a statement from Trump. He railed against Twitter's decision. He tried to get his followers to follow him to other platforms. He said he will come up with other ways to communicate via social media.

But make no mistake. He has built up a special following on Twitter that cannot be recreated anywhere else. He had more than 80 million followers. And he cannot just take that somewhere else overnight.

Twitter says this decision was made partly because of fears of further violence. They are concerned Trump will incite further violence in the weeks to come. They are especially concerned about what we're seeing online that some folks trying to apparently organize future protests that could turn into riots.

That is a real fear among Silicon Valley executives, at Twitter and elsewhere. I'm talking about Facebook, YouTube and other platforms and other companies. They do not want to be seen as even partially responsible for any further violence in the United States in the days and weeks to come -- Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.

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HOLMES: Sabrina Siddiqui is a CNN political analyst and also the national politics reporter for the world's "The Wall Street Journal."

Good to see you, Sabrina. Let's start with the House Democrats planning to introduce articles of impeachment, including incitement to insurrection.

What do you see as the chances of success there?

SABRINA SIDDIQUI, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that if House Democrats do hold another impeachment vote, which they can fast-track without holding the kind of hearings that you saw over the course of months in the first impeachment trial against President Trump, then they probably would be able to pass or, I should say, impeach him once again, because they just need a majority in the House.

And Democrats still do have a majority in the House. But sending that over to the Senate, where Republicans, in their final weeks of having control of that chamber, I just don't think you are going to have enough support from Republicans to remove Trump from office.

There are some who said that maybe they would be open to looking at it. But that is a far cry, even if some of them broken from Trump now, from actually in the final days of his presidency, removing him from office.

HOLMES: When you look back at what happened at the Capitol, those extraordinary events, there was all this talk of possible violence. It was all over social media for weeks, calling for the storming of the Capitol.

We have the president on December 19th, telling people to come along, it's going to be wild. Yet that security posture was woeful.

What do you make of the lack of security at the Capitol?

And there's even claims by some that some officers actively helped rioters.

SIDDIQUI: I think that this was clearly a massive breach on the part of security. And there was a lot of warning going into the demonstrations that turned into riots that there was going to be an effort on the part of supporters of the president to storm the Capitol.

They had even talked about, in some of these online forums, forcing an evacuation. And so, the evidence was all there to suggest that this was going to happen.

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SIDDIQUI: And you are hearing from federal law enforcement officials, that they say they were unprepared. But it simply doesn't line up with all of the activity online that suggested this is where it was going to be.

It turns out the participation of police officers and whether they had any officers who were facilitating that, I think that's something that we are still getting more information about and there is going to be an investigation certainly into how this happened.

But I think a lot of people cannot help but notice the difference in how the rioters were treated at the Capitol when you compare it to the amount of security we saw when there were Black Lives Matter protests last summer.

Really, the full force of the federal law enforcement was deployed. And we simply did not see that on Wednesday, even in the midst of the insurrection. It took a significant amount of time to get backup and to get them to deploy the National Guard, when it was members of Congress and the nation's Capitol that was under siege.

HOLMES: When you look at everything that has been happening in the last -- you could say the last 2 hours these days -- but over the last, a few weeks, the election season has shown the Republican Party seems to be pretty broken in many ways. What does the party need to do going forward to recover from what has

been a Trump takeover?

And it's important to note, Trumpism does not magically end January 20th.

SIDDIQUI: The biggest challenge I think for the party moving forward is that it still is very much split between those who remain ardent supporters of the president. And then you have this other camp of Republicans, who have now defected, despite supporting President Trump's behavior all the way up to the very end.

And they're saying, look, it's just time to move on. If there is no introspection, if there is no public reckoning around how we got here, then I don't see how Republicans move on.

So, I think that Trumpism will very much be alive and well. This is not something that, once it has come out of the shadows, you could just send it back into some dark corner in terms of the sentiment that you see prevailing across this country, that really manifested itself in such a stark way earlier this week.

So, this is going to be a really fascinating story, especially going into 2024, how whether the Republican Party addresses the 4 years under President Trump and what that transformation looks like and what really they plan to do to move forward, if at all.

HOLMES: Yes. Indeed. Fascinating stuff. Sabrina, good to see you, Sabrina Siddiqui. Thanks.

SIDDIQUI: Thank you.

HOLMES: Federal investigators are searching for those who took part in the riot at the U.S. Capitol. The FBI says the founder of the Hawaii chapter of the far-right group Proud Boys, well, he has been arrested. He admitted to CNN that he was there.

And officials say he posted this tweet, with the caption, "Hello from the Capitol." Pete Martin has more on others facing charges.

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PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New court documents detail the charges against Lonnie Coffman of Alabama, who federal officials say packed his truck with 11 Molotov cocktails, a handgun and an assault rifle and parked it only a block from the Capitol grounds.

He is one of 13 people just charged by the Department of Justice as investigators are scouring the internet for images to identify those involved in Wednesday's attack on the Capitol.

Federal officials also just charged West Virginia state lawmaker Derrick Evans after he livestreamed from inside the Capitol and identified himself.

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DERRICK EVANS, WEST VIRGINIA STATE LAWMAKER (from captions): We're in, we're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!

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MUNTEAN (voice-over): Evans' attorney insists his client is not a criminal, instead exercising his First Amendment rights as a, quote, "independent activist and journalist."

Evans later deleted the clip, but West Virginia's governor did not mince words about what he saw.

GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): It is a scar on West Virginia.

How in the world can we possibly, possibly think that's anything but bad stuff?

MUNTEAN (voice-over): Also arrested, the man seen sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. Richard Barnett of Arkansas now faces a trio of federal charges, including theft of public property, an act he detailed in a local television interview on Thursday.

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RICHARD BARNETT, CAPITOL RIOTER (from captions): I set my flag down, I sat down there at my desk. I am a taxpayer. I'm a patriot. That ain't her desk. We loaned her that desk. And she ain't appreciating the desk so I thought I'd sit down and appreciate the desk. I threw my feet up on the desk.

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MUNTEAN (voice-over): But not all the consequences are coming through the justice system. The Texas attorney is no longer employed by his insurance company after posting what he called "peacefully demonstrating" on Facebook.

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MUNTEAN (voice-over): A Maryland marketing company fired a worker seen inside the Capitol, wearing his company ID badge.

And former Pennsylvania state lawmaker Rick Saccone resigned from his post as an adjunct college instructor after he posted this video to Facebook.

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RICK SACCONE, CAPITOL RIOTER: (INAUDIBLE). They are macing them up there. We're trying to run out all the evil people in there, all the RINOs that have betrayed our president. We're going to run them out of their offices.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MUNTEAN (voice-over): Police in Washington are distributing photos of those who stormed the Capitol and now say they have received more than 17,000 tips. D.C.'s acting police chief says they will aggressively pursue persons of interest.

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CHIEF ROBERT CONTEE, METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: We still have a significant amount of work ahead of us to identify and hold each and every one of the violent mob accountable for their actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: Investigators say photos are key for them. The FBI set up a portal so people can upload their own. But in an area already laden with cameras, it will become especially hard to hide from the law -- Pete Muntean, CNN, Washington.

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HOLMES: The incoming Biden administration plans to shake up how vaccines are distributed. How they plan to release all available doses instead of holding some back and why that could be a risky move. We will have that after the break.

Also, some U.S. doctors think they've found a solution to save more lives from being lost. They have outlined their plan in an open letter. We will speak to one of its authors.

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HOLMES: More than 20,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. so far this year. That data from Johns Hopkins University. It took just eight days to reach that marker, compared with the 40 days it took to lose the first 20,000 last year.

California just one of the states where hundreds of people are losing their lives to the virus every day. It is so bad that -- look at that image there -- dozens of refrigerated trailers now being used as makeshift morgues. Nick Watt is in Los Angeles for us.

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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Team Biden tells CNN they have a radical plan: release nearly every vaccine dose on hand. Stop holding back for second doses.

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): We would certainly pick up the speed of our vaccination. We need some assurances that those second doses are going to be there. WATT: Pfizer and Moderna won't say if they're able to manufacture those second doses in time.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The second dose is absolutely critical. That one dose of Moderna and one dose of Pfizer has not been proven to be efficacious to the degree that we want.

WATT: The latest numbers reported just over 22 million doses distributed, fewer than 7 million actually in arms.

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WATT (voice-over): Calls for easing the rules on who gets it when.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: If we can't vaccinate the people who are most in danger, we're going to lose lives we did not need to lose.

WATT: So, New York's governor just expanded the pool of people who can get a shot and now includes first responders and over 75s.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): That's, by far, the largest group and those are people who desperately need it.

WATT: Just look at New York's new case count line, exploding way higher than spring. The NYPD commissioner just tested positive.

Across America 4,085 people reported dead yesterday. The most COVID deaths in a day ever and here in Los Angeles?

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D-CA), LOS ANGELES: We had 259 deaths. That's one more than all the homicides in 2019 in L.A. city combined, in a single day, equal to a year of homicides.

WATT (voice-over): Arizona has now overtaken California, leads the nation in new cases per capita. But still no statewide mask mandate to control the virus.

WATT: A crumb of comfort: the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine does appear to work against that more contagious coronavirus strain first identified in the U.K., now spreading across the U.S. -- Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: An open letter is calling on the incoming Biden administration to give high filtration masks to each and every American. The physicians who wrote the letter also encouraged using those high- quality face coverings in a nation mask mandate.

The letter says in part -- we will read a little bit of it -- "Ideally, a set of masks would be mailed to each household every month. The costs of doing so pale in comparison to the pandemic's toll on lives and the economy."

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HOLMES: Dr. Abraar Karan is with Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He's one of the physicians behind that open letter.

Doctor, good to see you. Let's talk about it, the letter calling on the Biden administration to make and send out high-quality masks to homes across America.

How important do you think a move like that would be in terms of mitigating this virus?

DR. ABRAAR KARAN, BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: Hey, Michael, thank you so much for having me. Now we think it would be critical, personal protective equipment is something that's been talked about since the very beginning of the epidemic.

As you can remember, at the very start, there was a little confusion going on about masks and who needs to wear them and when they need to wear them.

As soon as we got past that and we really needed to launch wearing masks, especially in high-risk settings, where indoors and near roundabouts (ph), we realized that we need to do this as soon as possible.

And the best form of doing it is not folding up (INAUDIBLE) in your house, it is to be getting the high-quality mask that can provide the level of protection that you need against both droplets and aerosols.

And aerosols, we know, contribute to spread in certain high-risk settings (INAUDIBLE). Many of us (INAUDIBLE) in different times.

HOLMES: It is something that is tangible and obviously works.

But how do you enforce it?

When you think of those who don't want to wear masks now, it reminds you of, you can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

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KARAN: Absolutely. You are bringing up a very important point, which is that not everybody is going to do it. But that is true for really anything in the epidemic. The matter of fact is you don't need everyone to have everything (ph). You need enough people to do enough things to bring the epidemic to where the R number is below one, which means the average number of people that one person infects is less than 1, while an epidemic shrink.

The better mask that we can get out there, would have to provide two functions. One, it's to protect who's wearing it and two is, if you happen to be infectious and you do not know it because you are not showing symptoms yet, that mask will also prevent droplets and aerosols from going out into the environment. So, both of those factors are extremely important and, of course, not

everyone will do it. Not everybody is going to be wearing a mask at all times. But if we could get better masks, the more we can stop the spread.

HOLMES: Yes, exactly.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of other things. The U.K. variant is already in the U.S. and the former CDC director, Tom Frieden, tweeted something earlier about that strain and I just wanted to read it.

He said, "I have never seen an epidemic curve like this, and this curve is with a lockdown" -- talking about the U.K.

He says, "If the variant becomes common in the U.S. it is close to a worst-case scenario with a baseline of full hospitals."

I mean it is a frightening thing.

How worried are you about that variant and the spread as we are seeing at the moment?

KARAN: Absolutely. I think this is a huge concern.

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KARAN: As you know, certain parts of the country are already at their tipping point. L.A. County, which is where I am originally from, a lot of my medical school classmates are now doctors there, treating patients. And the type of situation that they're describing to me are things that really should never be happening here.

I am a global health doctor. I've worked in rural Africa, I've worked in India (ph), Latin America and there's a lot of hospitals I work in, where we just don't have the resources that we need to treat the patients, that we need to treat.

And I've seen this over the last 12 years in my work in global health. I'm hearing about things now that are happening in L.A. County, which I never, ever expected to happen. You hear about things about one nurse to five ICU patients. That is unheard of.

You're hearing about patients needing to be transferred out of hospitals to make room for more critically ill patients. (INAUDIBLE). The situation is really bad, and we cannot afford to have them, transmissible variants, at this time.

HOLMES: Dr. Abraar Karan, thank you so much. I appreciate your time and great idea with the masks.

KARAN: Thanks so much, Michael, take care.

HOLMES: We will take a quick break. When we come back on the program, the London mayor takes action as the coronavirus spreads out of control in of the British capital. We will have an update for you when we come back.

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DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: There is a clear problem that low and most middle-income countries that are not receiving the vaccine yet.

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HOLMES: That was the head of the World Health Organization, urging richer countries and coronavirus vaccine manufacturers to stop making bilateral deals. He says those deals bump up prices and put marginalized nations at a disadvantage. He has also asked countries to donate surplus vaccines if they have them.

Take a look at some of the other global pandemic headlines. Brazilian health officials have gotten requests for emergency use of two COVID- 19 vaccines. On Friday, Brazil surpassed 8 million total infections, the hardest hit country in the world after the U.S. and India.

In China, health officials say 9 million doses of vaccine have been administered there so far. And the country reporting its biggest increase in cases in months thanks to an outbreak in Hebei province; 11 million residents in the capital are under lockdown.

Sweden will introduce new COVID restrictions starting on Sunday. Shops and gyms will have to calculate for 10 square meters per visitor.

The U.K. reporting its highest daily death toll Friday since the pandemic began. It has the fifth highest number recorded fatalities in the world. New infections soaring and officials are warning the National Health Service is under tremendous strain. Salma Abdelaziz has more from London.

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SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: The mayor of London has declared a major incident. Mayor Sadiq Khan says the spread of coronavirus across the city is out of control and the hospitals, they could soon be ready running out of beds.

It's yet another consequence of this terrible new variant of COVID-19 that is more transmissible. It is causing record-breaking infection rates across the country.

There is one bit of good news today. The Moderna vaccine was authorized for use by British regulators; 17 million doses have been preordered by the government. It is the third vaccine to receive approval.

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ABDELAZIZ (voice-over): And it is all part of the ramping up of this country's vaccination program. The prime minister essentially putting it as a wartime effort, a herculean one, to defeat this new terrible enemy, this variant of COVID-19.

ABDELAZIZ: Just to give you an idea the scale of this national effort, by the end of next week, there will be hundreds of sites, pharmacies, doctors' offices, vaccination centers, hospitals that will be giving hundreds of thousands of vaccinations per day.

The military is also involved, troops carrying out operational logistics to try to get these supplies into all of these different locations. The goal is to vaccinate the country's key priority groups, its most vulnerable people, about 15 million people, by the middle of February.

It is ambitious; the prime minister has warned of lumps and bumps along the way. But it is the only plan they have to get out of this health crisis -- Salma Abdelaziz, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Now with only 11 days to go until President Trump leaves office, he faces the possibility of becoming the first president to be impeached twice. Coming up, the growing push among Democrats to fast- track that process. We will be right back.

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HOLMES: Welcome back to our viewers all over the world. I'm Michael Holmes and you are watching CNN NEWSROOM.

U.S. Democrats and a rising number of Republicans say it is too dangerous for President Trump to stay in office, even for 11 more days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the president chose to be an insurrectionist by encouraging rioters on Wednesday.

House Democrats plan to introduce an impeachment resolution next week. When asked if he supports that effort, President Joe Biden, President- Elect Joe Biden says it is not his call.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide. We are going to do our job and the Congress can decide how to proceed with theirs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now Democrats say there is too much at stake if Mr. Trump does not leave office. CNN's Manu Raju explains what's next. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: House Democrats are pushing ahead and may make Donald Trump a historic figure in this regard: the only president in American history who could be impeached twice.

This comes in the aftermath of the demands by Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and other top Democrats, that the president resign or that the vice president, Mike Pence, and the presidential cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution to force the president out of office.

[02:35:00]

RAJU: Now there is no indication the president will resign or that Pence will invoke the 25th Amendment and there are all indications that Democrats plan to push ahead to impeach Donald Trump.

And what the Democrats are looking at is one article of impeachment, looking at the incitement of an insurrection. That is the article in which they would charge that the president for committing a high crime and misdemeanor.

According to this document that I obtained, that it shows the president's -- what they are -- accuse the president of high crime by his actions; postelection, his efforts to try to overturn the election and, of course, all culminating on Wednesday, when he incited that violent and deadly mob to come to Capitol Hill that led to the deaths of 5 individuals so far and so much destruction and damage and fear here in this Capitol building, caused by that mob of Trump supporters.

This comes as some Republicans seem open to the idea of removing the president from office and at least one Republican so far calling on the president to resign, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

There is still questions about how this will work. The Democrats, if they go ahead, are looking at a possible vote in the full House by the middle of next week. But will there be enough time for an impeachment trial to remove the president from office before he is gone on January 20th?

Highly unlikely at the moment. And it could kick the matter into the new Biden administration, when the Democrats take control of the Senate majority on January 20th. They can have an impeachment trial at that point and prevent Donald Trump from ever running for office again.

All those questions are still yet to be settled. But major decisions on the horizon in the next day or so, as they push ahead to making Donald Trump the only president to be impeached twice and, of course, one of only three presidents in history who have ever been impeached, Donald Trump being one of them -- Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE) HOLMES: Let's talk a little bit more now about how the impeachment process works. The House has the power to impeach the president with just a simple majority of votes. That is comparable to bringing charges or indicting the president.

The process then moves to the Senate, where a trial is held with the chief justice of the Supreme Court presiding. It takes a two-thirds vote by the Senate to convict the president.

Now if convicted, the president is removed from office, of course, and the vice president is put in power. It is also possible that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell could run out the clock and just not proceed with any trial before Mr. Trump leaves office on January 20th.

Let's get some more perspective on all of this and talk about the ins and the outs with CNN election law analyst Franita Tolson, who joins me from Los Angeles. She is also the vice dean of the University of Southern California Law School.

Great to see you. Let's talk about this.

What are the options when it comes to impeachment?

How likely is it that it would succeed?

FRANITA TOLSON, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Impeachment, it's likely that he will be impeached. I think the momentum is there and that the Democrats in the House feel very strongly that there must be some sanction for the chaos at the Capitol on Wednesday.

It's less likely that he will be impeached. As you mentioned, it takes two-thirds of the Senate to impeach and it will be really hard to convince a fair amount of the Republicans to come over and agree with Democrats that the president should be impeached.

Some of these Republicans have -- they will be like the band on The Titanic, really. They will go down with the ship. In the wake of the vote count on Wednesday, where Congress convened to do its constitutional duty and count the Electoral College votes, some Republicans still voted against the Electoral College votes in Pennsylvania because they believe Donald Trump is the leader of the party and they support him.

Senate Democrats have been more vocal than House -- I'm sorry, Senate Republicans have been more vocal than House Republicans in pushing back against President Trump. But generally speaking, he is still popular within the party.

HOLMES: Yes, exactly.

How good is the incitement to insurrection, legally how persuasive is that?

TOLSON: Well, the standard for impeachment is a little bit different, right? So, the House Democrats do not have to prove that the president incited a riot beyond a reasonable doubt, which would be the standard if this was being prosecuted in a court of law.

It's up to whatever the Senate thinks that it is. Because two-thirds of the Senate, they use their political judgment and determine whether or not the president has committed a crime that is sufficient to remove him from office. So, impeachment is a political proceeding; it is not really a legal one so the standard is a little bit different.

HOLMES: I wanted to ask you, too, when it comes to the Republicans talking, of course, about healing and moving on and everything.

[02:40:00]

HOLMES: And you tweeted something that I wanted to read out to people.

You said, "If we turn the page and there are no consequences, it will happen again," explain that more.

FRANITA TOLSON, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Because it's happened before. In the wake of the Civil War, we had Reconstruction and there were a number of biracial, diverse governments across Southern states that were thrown out through violence and fraud, election fraud and so on. And nothing happened.

White supremacists threw them out and we had 80 years in the South where African Americans could not vote. So, if we move forward as if nothing has happened, if there is no sanction for this behavior, then it's possible we could find ourselves here again.

We have to have a strong statement that this type of behavior is not acceptable in this country. This country has been largely built on this duality of people exercising their right to vote, expressing their dissatisfaction but also exercising violence. So, we have to push back against the violence.

HOLMES: Absolutely. Well put. We've only literally got a minute left. But there is talk of a self-pardoning with this president.

Obviously, without precedent, what chance that would hold up?

TOLSON: President Trump has been a norm breaker. So I cannot say with confidence that he would not try to pardon himself. This is not something that the Supreme Court has weighed in on, although the Department of Justice has said that the idea of a president pardoning himself is inconsistent with his duty to faithfully execute the law.

So generally speaking, it just goes against every norm in our system. But because this president has been a norm breaker, I would not be surprised if he pardoned himself.

HOLMES: It's fascinating. I wish we had more time. We do not. Franita Tolson, let's get you back soon and talk again. Thank you.

TOLSON: Thank you. HOLMES: Now Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick is being remembered

as a hero after dying of injuries sustained when rioters stormed the building on Wednesday. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she ordered flags at the Capitol lowered to half-staff in his honor.

A statement from the Capitol police says Sicknick got hurt while physically engaging with the rioters and then collapsed after returning back to his division office. Sources say the U.S. attorney's office plans a federal murder investigation.

Just before we go, a programming note: CNN takes an in-depth look at the storming of the U.S. Capitol. It is in "The Trump Insurrection." It airs on Sunday night in the U.S. and the times there you see on your screen.

Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM and spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes. I will be back in a little under 20 minutes with more news. Meanwhile, "MARKETPLACE AFRICA" after a short break.