Kathrine Frich
He defended the president during his 2021 impeachment trial.
Losing a big political battle always changes the mood inside a capital city.
When rival lawmakers suddenly take the wheel, the conversation quickly shifts from passing bills to settling old scores.
And in Washington, that shift is already sparking talk of a familiar showdown.
A new threat
After Democrats flipped both the House of Representatives and the Senate on Tuesday, November 3, rumours began swirling that 80-year-old US President Donald Trump could face a third impeachment, according to the Irish Star.
Before the vote, the president had barnstormed the country asking MAGA supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot”, yet on Wednesday morning he struck a calmer note on Fox News, blaming Republican candidates for the losses while admitting Democrats “did a good job”.
Even so, the president has braced for a clash for months. Back in August, he told a crowd in South Carolina that voters would “lose everything” if Democrats won Congress, adding: “I’m going to be impeached. They’re going to impeach me. They have no idea why.”
Speaking from the White House on Wednesday, he issued a fresh warning to his rivals. The president claimed that launching a third inquiry would “destroy” the Democratic Party because the country is “more successful now than at any time in its history”.
Why bother now
Trial attorney Michael T. van der Veen, who defended the president during his 2021 impeachment trial following the January 6 Capitol riots, told the Irish Star that he doubts lawmakers will actually go through with it. While he said he would be “honoured to represent him again”, he stressed that a fresh inquiry makes little sense today.
“But I don’t think it’ll be necessary, and I would urge everybody to be going forward rather than going backwards in that kind of a way. There would be no point to it,” van der Veen told the Irish Star.
He noted that the 2021 effort was meant to disqualify the president from running again, while talk of a third term now is just a “distraction”.
“He’s not going to be able to have a third term, and so I don’t think the goal or the motivation or the objectives are there as they were in the last impeachment,” van der Veen added.
