Members of
the House of Representatives debate the two articles of impeachment against
Donald Trump, with both parties accusing each other variously of defending the
indefensible, tearing families apart and even being nastier to the president
than Pontius Pilate was to Jesus. After a day-long debate, Trump became the
third president in US history to be
impeached.
Trump
impeached by House of Representatives in historic vote
Trump
becomes third American president to be impeached as two articles approved,
mostly along party lines
Tom
McCarthy in New York and Joan E Greve in Washington
Thu 19 Dec
2019 08.14 GMTFirst published on Wed 18 Dec 2019 18.20 GMT
Just shy of
the third anniversary of his presidency, Donald Trump was impeached in a mostly
party-line vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening.
Trump
became the third president to be impeached in US history.
After a
full day of debate, the House voted 230-197 to approve a first article of
impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power, with one “present” vote. A
second article, charging Trump with obstruction of Congress, was approved
229-198.
Trump now
faces a trial in the Senate, where he is expected to be acquitted. Proceedings
in the Republican-controlled body are likely to begin next month, but the exact
timing remains unclear as Democrats and Republicans negotiate over the terms of
the trial.
As
Wednesday’s vote unfolded, Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Battle Creek,
Michigan. “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached,” he said, to
cheers. “This lawless partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the
Democrat party.”
But Trump’s
fierce efforts to seal himself in a bubble of adulation, and his insistence
that Republicans pretend away the existence of facts threatening to pierce that
bubble, could not divert the historic reality coalescing on Capitol Hill.
The House
speaker, Nancy Pelosi, described the proceedings as a “sad day” for the
country. “The president’s reckless activities necessitated us having to
introduce articles of impeachment,” she said at a press conference following
the vote.
Nancy
Pelosi as the House votes in Washington DC, on 18 December.
Nancy
Pelosi as the House votes in Washington DC, on 18 December. Photograph: Saul
Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
‘A republic
under threat’
Pelosi had
opened the debate on the articles of impeachment just after midday, calling
Trump “an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our
elections”.
Wearing a
large pin of the ceremonial mace of the chamber as she rose to speak on the
House floor, Pelosi warned that “our founder’s vision of a republic is under
threat by actions from the White House”.
“It is
tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary,” she
said. “He gave us no choice.” The speech was met with sustained applause from
her caucus.
Democrats
accuse Trump of pursuing a scheme to cheat in the 2020 election by pressuring
Ukraine to manufacture bad news about the former vice-president Joe Biden, one
of Trump’s main Democrat rivals, and then blocking congressional oversight.
Republican
Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking member on the judiciary committee, said
that impeachment had always been an “inevitability” under the Democrats and
denied that Trump had committed a crime.
In a
marathon and at times painfully repetitive partisan volley, members exchanged
one- and two-minute blocks of speaking time over about eight hours of debate.
Republicans accused Democrats of having a vendetta against Trump and running
what they said was a corrupt process, while Democrats taunted Republicans for
not even attempting to defend Trump on the merits.
“They cannot articulate a real defense of the
president’s actions,” said Jerry Nadler, the judiciary committee chair.
Negotiations
over Senate trial
Trump
joined Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 as the only US
presidents to be impeached. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before he could be
impeached.
A
two-thirds majority vote in the Republican-controlled Senate would be required
to convict and remove Trump from office. With no Republican senators currently
voicing support for impeachment, Trump appeared safe to survive.
“They’re
gonna do the right thing,” Trump said onstage in Michigan.
Expected to
start in early January, the exact timing of the Senate trial remains unclear as
Democrats and Republicans continue to negotiate over what the proceedings.
Pelosi on
Wednesday night declined to commit to a timeline on when the House would send
over the articles of impeachment to the Senate – a prerequisite for the trial –
or when Democrats would appoint members to present the case against Trump.
“We cannot
name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” she said.
“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.”
Democrats
have questioned the position of the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch
McConnell, who said on Tuesday he was “not impartial about this at all”.
Zero
Republican representatives voted in favor of either article of impeachment,
fueling the party’s charges that the proceedings were driven by partisanship.
Democrats replied that Republicans were hostage to Trump and unable to deliver
a sound judgment in the matter.
Two
Democrats, including one whose staff said he would soon be switching parties to
the Republican side, broke with their party to oppose both articles of
impeachment. A third Democrat, Jared Golden of Maine, split his vote. A fourth
Democrat, the presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, voted “present”. The
House’s sole independent, former Republican Justin Amash, voted for
impeachment.
Trump was
handed the vote tally onstage during his rally. “We didn’t lose one Republican
vote and three Democrats voted for us,” he said to applause. “The Republican
party has never been so affronted, but they’ve never been so united as they are
right now.”
Early in
the day, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, presented a resolution
seeking to condemn Adam Schiff, the chair of the intelligence committee, and
Nadler for what McCarthy said were abuses of power and violations of procedure.
The resolution was tabled without a vote.
Schiff,
whose committee performed the bulk of the investigative work in the impeachment
inquiry, took to the floor just before 4pm to detail the case against Trump.
“The
president of the United States was willing to sacrifice our national security
by withholding support for a critical strategic partner at war in order to
improve his re-election prospects,” Schiff said. “But for the courage of
someone willing to blow the whistle, he would have gotten away with it.
“Instead,
he got caught. He tried to cheat and he got caught.”
Trump’s
event Wednesday night was billed as a Merry Christmas rally in Battle Creek,
Michigan, a shrinking food manufacturing center in a county that swung from
supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to backing Trump in 2016.
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