Sen. Sherrod Brown continues calls for 25th Amendment, asks Republicans to acknowledge fair election

If the U.S. House moves on impeachment hearings, it needs to happen quickly, Sen. Sherrod Brown said. In a news conference Friday morning, Brown said he supports first invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president and a majority of the president's Cabinet to remove the sitting president. That would be the Cleveland Democratic senator's preferred option, as Brown said it would be better for the country because it is less partisan. Brown said he will not lobby individual members of the Cabinet, but he said his Republican colleagues may have some sway to get the 25th Amendment invoked. He said he wants to give Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet some time to begin that process before going to impeachment. But either way, Brown said his main concern is not punishing President Donald Trump but restricting what he could do over the next 12 days with national and domestic security. "This is beyond anything we've ever seen," Brown said. "There's no telling what this president might do in the next 12 days." Impeachment proceedings would have to begin in the House, and Brown said things would need to move quickly to get to the Senate. If the House were to impeach Trump, Brown said senators would need to get to Washington and act on impeachment within a day. A president can be impeached after he leaves office, but Brown said he doesn't know if it is worth Congress' time to do that to Trump, although he said it's an interesting idea. As for the senators who Brown said played to the crowd of rioters, such as Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, Brown said he doesn't know what's next. He did not rule out the possibility of censuring the senators or calling for their expulsion, but he said the answer to those questions are not yet clear. Brown also called for answers on how rioters were able to make their way into the U.S. Capitol. From the top down, Brown said police weren't ready for the riot that followed Wednesday's scheduled pro-Trump demonstration. The response from Capitol police exposed racial inequities in policing, Brown said. He questioned why the response from police was so much different from the response to Black Lives Matter protests over the summer in D.C. Had the rioters been Black on Wednesday, Brown said there would have been more arrests and more people would have died. "It tells me there's something in our society that we need to fix," he said. Brown called for systemic changes to dealing with structural racism in policing, health care, income and other areas. Under President-elect Joe Biden, Brown said there will be a focus on solving those issues as well as addressing wealth inequality. That includes a plea to Brown's Republican colleagues to stand up on issues of moral importance, which Brown said are about race and income inequality. The country's ability to move forward from Wednesday's attack and the Trump presidency will depend largely on Republicans' response, Brown said. Brown said Biden also will be key to bringing people together under a unifying message, and he said Biden is perfect for that role. Brown said he's willing to compromise with Republicans, but they have to be willing to work with Democrats. "We need Republicans to say this is a legitimate president," Brown said. "Most Republicans, they'll say he's president, but they won't say that election fraud didn't exist. And we need them to say that." There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in the U.S. election of Biden. After the rioters were cleared out of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, the House and Senate certified the Electoral College votes. Two of Lorain County's representatives in Congress — Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, and Bob Gibbs, R-Lakeview — voted in favor of objecting to the Electoral College votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Both of those objections were shot down in both the Senate and the House. Contact Laina Yost at (440) 329-7121 or lyost@chroniclet.com.