'Multiple abuses of power': Critics argue it's time to 'impeach Trump again'

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12 March

Donald Trump, accompanied by his wife Melania, attends a New Year's Eve event at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 31, 2024. REUTERS/Marco Bello

More than 250,000 have signed a petition to support an impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached during his first term. The Impeach Trump Again campaign is being led by the advocacy group Free Speech for People. “This president has already committed multiple abuses of power since assuming the presidency, and the framers designed the Constitution to ensure that we would not have a monarch or a tyrant govern this nation,” says the group’s president, John Bonifaz. “When we see these abuses of power, we have to invoke this impeachment clause.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition to support an impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, who was twice impeached during his first term. The Impeach Trump Again campaign is being led by the group Free Speech for People.

This comes as Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green has threatened to soon introduce new articles of impeachment against Trump. Last week, Congressmember Green was removed from the House floor for protesting Donald Trump’s congressional address. He was then censured by the House. Green spoke on Democracy Now! on Friday.

REP. AL GREEN: Impeachment is a remedy for a runaway president who believes that there are no guardrails, who believes that the Supreme Court has placed him above the law, and who is now very close to a point where he will not honor court orders. When he does that, Ms. Goodman, he at that point will become a dictator. We are this close. When he goes over that line, that second, that scintilla of a second, he will become a dictator, and we will be under a dictatorship. I refuse to wait until that happens before I act, so I will act in defense of the Constitution and for the people of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by John Bonifaz, president of Free Speech for People, organizing the Impeach Trump Again campaign. During Trump’s first term, he co-authored the book The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.

So, he was impeached twice during the first term. We’re not even talking about a hundred days into his second term. Why, John?

JOHN BONIFAZ: Thank you, Amy, for having me.

We’re launching this campaign because we believe it’s critical that we invoke this impeachment clause of the Constitution at this moment in history. This president has already committed multiple abuses of power since assuming the presidency. And the framers designed the Constitution to ensure that we would not have a monarch or a tyrant govern this nation. They set up three coequal branches of government: the Congress, the executive branch, the judiciary. But they also put in this extra guardrail, the impeachment clause, and it’s designed to deal with that lawless president who abuses the power of the office.

And those multiple abuses of power keep piling up every day. We’ve documented at ImpeachTrumpAgain.org many of these abuses, including his abuse of the pardon power, where he, on day one, effectively pardoned 1,500 of his fellow insurrectionists who had attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

We have also documented the way in which he issued an executive order to end birthright citizenship. We know that this is a constitutional right. You cannot erase a part of the Constitution with an executive order. Two separate federal courts have found this to be unconstitutional. But it’s also an abuse of power.

He has usurped the power of Congress by freezing funds that have been duly appropriated by Congress. Only Congress has the power to appropriate funds. And he’s gone ahead and frozen those funds. And now courts have demanded that he release those funds, and he’s defying those court orders — an attack on the judiciary, an attack on the Congress.

The list goes on. And the point of impeachment power is to ensure that we do not have this kind of lawlessness coming out of the Oval Office, and that’s why we launched this campaign.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, John, how do you — how would you respond to critics who, even though they may agree with you on the violations by Trump, say that in the last two impeachments, even when Democrats had a majority in Congress, they could not move forward against Trump; now with Republicans in charge of both houses, this will virtually go nowhere?

JOHN BONIFAZ: Well, Juan, the important point here is to start building the case for why this president must be impeached and removed from public office. The fact is that when we see these abuses of power, we have to invoke this impeachment clause. You know, we know the votes are not going to be there today to start impeachment proceedings. But the point is that we, as a people, must demand that our members of Congress stand up and defend our Constitution at this critical moment in history. We commend Congressman Al Green for standing up and demanding that impeachment proceedings begin against this president. And we believe all members of Congress who still believe in the Constitution and our democracy must stand with him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of what would be the next steps — let’s say you keep building this petition — what would be the — I know Congressman Green has said he would introduce articles of impeachment, but what would be your sense of whether you’re having some progress on this issue?

JOHN BONIFAZ: Well, first, we see the progress with the 250,000-plus people who’ve already joined this campaign in less than two months, signing up at ImpeachTrumpAgain.org. And we want those numbers to continue to grow, and we believe they will.

But Congressman Green has pledged that he will introduce articles of impeachment, and we’re working with him and his office on that. And when he does so, they can be a privileged resolution requiring a floor vote, as he did in 2017. He was the first member of Congress to stand up in the last Trump administration. And we will see those numbers grow, as well. Members of Congress will have to be put on record with a floor vote on articles of impeachment as to where they stand. Do they stand on the side of the Constitution and their oath to protect the Constitution and our democracy, or do they stand on the sidelines in the face of this lawlessness from the Oval Office?

AMY GOODMAN: Before you go, John, you’re also working on other issues, like abolishing super PACs. I think that Elon Musk has promised to raise something like — or, he’s attempting to raise — $100 million for three pro-Trump super PACs. Of course, he could just give that himself, as the world’s richest man.

JOHN BONIFAZ: Yes. It’s important to remember that super PACs did not get created by the Supreme Court. People think it got created out of Citizens United, and that’s not true. Super PACs were created by a federal appeals court ruling out of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which wrongly held that because, in their view, independent expenditures cannot corrupt, that unlimited donations to political action committees cannot corrupt. That’s patently untrue, as we now know. Fifteen years after that decision, we see the history of how unlimited donations to super PACs, from the Elon Musks and others, have dominated our elections and corrupted the political process.

So, we are engaged, with others, in working to abolish super PACs. And the state of Maine recently passed a ballot initiative — 74% of the voters enacted it — to abolish super PACs in their state elections. Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School was a catalyst for this initiative, along with his group Equal Citizens. And we’re working with him and the state Attorney General’s Office to help defend that critical law and create a new test case for the opportunity to abolish super PACs nationwide.

AMY GOODMAN:Axios is reporting Elon Musk has told the White House he plans to give $100 million to President Trump’s political operation.

JOHN BONIFAZ: It’s rampant corruption. It’s absolutely an obscene situation that we have now, where billionaires have this opportunity to dominate our government and our politics. And we have to put an end to it. And abolishing super PACs is one important step forward. And we believe there will be congressional legislation, soon to be introduced, that will deal with that, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: And the role of Hawaii, what they’re doing as a model, as you see it?

JOHN BONIFAZ: So, in Hawaii, the state Senate just unanimously and with bipartisan support passed our model legislation to end multinational corporate spending. This is another whole problem with our system of money in politics, which allows foreign-influenced corporations to now dominate our politics and send, through the corporate form, foreign investment into our politics. So, Hawaii has passed this model legislation that we’ve been advancing across the country through the state Senate, and now it’s on to the White House. And we hope Hawaii will become the next state to pass this law.

AMY GOODMAN: John Bonifaz, we want to thank you for being with us, president of Free Speech for People. The group’s petition to Impeach Trump Again has gathered 250,000-plus signatures.

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