WASHINGTON — In the days after assault on the U.S. Capitol, some members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet talked about asking him to resign or invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office, according to testimony released Friday night.
Michael Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, told investigators for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack that Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia approached him about trying to get the president to quit.
“His request of me was, would I be willing to support or participate in a Cabinet meeting with the president?” Pompeo said, according to the deposition transcript.
Scalia wanted Trump to meet with the Cabinet about the events of Jan. 6,” Pompeo said, “implicitly, at least, if not directly, to ask him to think about resigning.”
“I thought the probability of that was low and that there was an awful lot of work to be done," Pompeo said, saying he considered the idea “not productive.”
The committee asked him whether he recalled a conversation with then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about invoking the 25th Amendment, with which the Cabinet can forcibly remove a president from office.
“I’m sure the words ‘25th Amendment’ came up in some conversations. I have no specific recollection of that. But it was never anything that I had a conversation with anyone that I can recall that was remotely serious,” Pompeo said.
On both counts, Pompeo told the committee he was never on board, and called the idea of Trump being removed forcibly “fanciful.”
Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, resigned after the Capitol assault. She denied being approached or having any discussions with other members of the Cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment.
Chao said she conveyed her decision to resign to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who did not try to dissuade her.
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(Bloomberg staff writer Flavia Krause-Jackson contributed to this story.)
