Increasingly isolated Trump threatened with second impeachment

Biden defers to Congress

Several Democrats and at least one Republican lawmaker -- Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska -- have urged Trump to resign and avoid the messiness of impeachment proceedings in his final full week in power, but he reportedly has remained defiant in talks with his aides.

Trump has said he never intended for his supporters to attack the Capitol building -- where Congress had convened to certify Biden's victory in the state-by-state Electoral College tally -- but only meant to encourage peaceful protest.

But in the chaos, one Trump supporter was shot and killed, while a Capitol policeman was gravely wounded and died the following day.

Lawmakers, reporters and staff were forced to take shelter while invaders looted and vandalized the historic building, some parading through its halls with Confederate flags.

Just as when Trump was impeached in a traumatic 2019 partisan vote -- but not convicted -- the process requires first majority backing in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, and then, for conviction, two-thirds approval in the Senate.

Reaching two-thirds could be difficult in the narrowly divided upper chamber, though a number of Republicans have expressed their disgust with the events of Wednesday.

"I do think the president committed impeachable offences," said Senator Pat Toomey in an interview on Fox News on Saturday.

But Trump supporters including Senator Lindsey Graham have urged Biden to intervene with top Democratic lawmakers to call off the impeachment effort.

"I'm calling on President-elect Biden to pick up the phone to call Nancy Pelosi and the Squad to end the second impeachment," Graham said Friday on Fox News, referring to the House speaker and a group of four young progressive Democrats who are favorite targets of the political right.

But Biden -- whose inauguration on January 20, traditionally a pomp-filled event attended by thousands, is being seriously scaled back -- on Friday side-stepped a reporter's question about impeachment.

"What the Congress decides to do is for them to do," he said.

- Agencies via Xinhua