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President Donald Trump impeached by US House
The House approved the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, in a 230-197 vote and the second article, obstructing congress, 229-198 at the end of 11 hours of debate.
The US House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on Wednesday on charges of abusing the powers of his office and obstructing Congress. He is the third American president to be impeached.
The Republican-led US Senate will now determine in a trial slated for sometime in January whether he should be removed from office, an unlikely event that will make him the first president removed in this fashion or be acquitted and remain in office, like President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Trump will likely be acquitted and continue in office.
The House approved the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, in a 230-197 vote and the second article, obstructing congress, 229-198 at the end of 11 hours of debate. All Republicans voted against the both articles as expected, but two Democrats voted against the first and three against the second — they represent districts that voted for Trump in 2016 and feared being defeated in a backlash if they voted for the motion. And one Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, the lawmaker from Hawaii who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, voted “present”, which is neither “yes” nor “no”.
“Today, as Speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment of the president of the United States,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had said opening the debate. “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice.”
The first article of impeachment against Trump accused him of abusing the powers of his office to advance his personal agenda by withholding military aid of $391 million and a White House meeting to force Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, former vice-president Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to run for the White House in 2020, his son Hunter Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
The second article accused him of obstructing Congress’s investigation into the Ukrainian effort
At the heart of the charges that led to the president’s historic impeachment is a phone call from July 25 in which President Trump urged Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden as a “favour”. Several official tasked to listen in on the call later testified to congressional investigators that they had found the references to domestic politics — Biden — “inappropriate” and they were concerned about it. A whistle-blower’s complaint about the call led to the launching of an impeachment inquiry by the Democratic-led House of Representatives in September.
Trump has rejected the charges and called the impeachment a politically motivated move to unseat him. He called it an “attempted coup”, in a letter to Speaker Pelosi.
At a rally in Michigan just before the vote, Trump said, “This lawless partisan impeachment is a suicide march for the Democratic Party.”
He added: “After three years of sinister witch hunts, hoaxes, scams, tonight House Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans.”
The White House called the impeachment “one of the most shameful political episodes in the history of our nation” and said the president is “prepared for the next steps and confident that he will be fully exonerated”.
