Impeachment article has 200 cosponsors: US rep.
The draft, citing "incitement of insurrection," could be introduced Monday.
President Donald Trump is slated to hand over control of the White House to President-elect Joe Biden in 11 days.
Top headlines:
- Rep. Cicilline: 'Just passed 200 cosponsors' on article of impeachment
- GOP Rep. Kinzinger: Best thing for the country is Trump to resign
- Pence to attend Biden's inauguration: Source
- Senate Democrat says Cruz, Hawley should resign or 'the Senate must expel them'
- Trump asked Georgia election investigator to 'find the fraud': Source
Senior State adviser fired after tweeting Trump 'needs to go'
After tweeting the president must go, citing the insurrection at the Capitol, Gabriel Noronha was fired from the State Department on Thursday, he has confirmed.
Noronha, who served as a senior adviser and spokesperson for Iran policy, is the first Trump administration official fired for speaking out against the president over the week’s events.
“President Trump fomented an insurrectionist mob that attacked the Capitol today. He continues to take every opportunity to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. These actions threaten our democracy and our Republic. Trump is entirely unfit to remain in office, and needs to go,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
-ABC News' Conor Finnegan
Overview: Trump retreats in wake of insurrection, Biden presses forward with transition
Biden is pressing forward with his inauguration on Jan. 20 -- and Trump won't be there, the president announced in a tweet Friday morning.
After Trump tweeted he wouldn’t attend, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary, Devin O’Malley, told ABC News, “Vice President Pence and the Second Lady have yet to make a decision regarding their attendance."
Earlier Friday, Trump took to Twitter to call his supporters "American Patriots" who "will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future" and "not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!
The tweets come hours after Trump, for the first time, said he would focus on an "ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power." In the video posted Thursday evening, he also rebuked those who vandalized the Capitol.
"To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay," Trump said.
While Democrats are looking at options for removing Trump from office, Biden has so far declined to comment on his stance for impeaching Trump or invoking the 25th Amendment with a spokesperson for his transition team saying Thursday he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are focusing on their duties.
Meanwhile, Trump has suggested to advisers that he wants to grant himself a pardon before leaving office, sources familiar with the discussions told ABC News.
Keeping on message, Biden is pressing forward with his transition and is expected to announce more picks for his economic and jobs team Friday afternoon including Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo as his choice for secretary of commerce and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh as his pick to serve as his secretary of labor. Walsh would be the first union member to serve in the role in almost half a century. Biden also named Isabel Guzman as his pick for small business administrator and Don Graves as his choice for secretary of commerce.
-ABC News' John Santucci, Katherine Faulders, Shannon Crawford and Ben Gittleson
Biden, Harris announce more members of the National Security Council
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have announced 21 additional members of the White House National Security Council including Yohannes Abraham as the chief of staff and executive secretary and Emily Horne as a senior director for press and NSC spokesperson.
The vast majority of the nominees previously served under the Obama administration. The positions do not require Senate confirmation.
-ABC News' Molly Nagle
Trump says he is not attending Biden's inauguration
Trump has announced he will not attend Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.
"To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th," Trump tweeted Friday morning.
It comes just hours after Trump, in video posted to Twitter Thursday evening, effectively conceded and said he would focus on an "ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power."
Only incumbent presidents -- John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829 and Andrew Johnson in 1869 -- did not attend the inaugurations of their successors. Johnson, like Trump, was impeached and not convicted.
-ABC News' Chris Donovan
Georgia election official debunks fraud theories Trump raised on call with Raffensperger
Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling, a Republican, at a press conference on what he called "anti-disinformation Monday," ran through major voter conspiracies pushed by Trump, his allies and far-right media outlets and debunked them one-by-one in an effort to restore faith in Georgia's election system.
"The reason I'm having to stand here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who have said their vote didn't count and it's not true," Sterling said, stressing to Georgians that their votes count ahead of critical runoffs in the state which will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.
"It's Whac-A-Mole again. It is Groundhog Day again. I'm going to talk about the things I've talked about repeatedly for two months, but I'm going to do it for one last time," Sterling said, adding he "screamed" at the radio upon hearing audio of the phone call between Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger because theories Trump questioned have already been "thoroughly debunked."
For example, Sterling, responding to those who claim there were roughly 2,500 people who voted without being registered, said, "Let's just be clear about this: you can't do it!" He said, "So that number is zero," going on to debunk other theories.
Asked if he believes, as some have said, that Trump's phone call was an attack on democracy, Sterling said he'd leave others to make that decision before adding he felt it was "out of place."
"I found it to be something that was not normal -- out of place -- and nobody I know who would be president would do something like that to a secretary of state," Sterling said.
Asked about Raffenperger's desire to have the phone call recorded and whether he was concerned about anything improper being said or needing to release it later, Sterling said it was recorded "out of an abundance of caution"
"I think given the environment we're in right now, the political situation that we're in, the history of the president, knowing that he sometimes doesn't necessarily characterize things as they might have actually occurred, it was out of abundance of caution," Sterling said.
"I'm sure the president's side may have recorded it, too. They may have been the ones who leaked part of that, too," he added.