Trump impeached after House passes historic vote

President blasts censure as ‘assault on America’

Donald Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives – a humiliating rebuke handed down to only three American presidents in history.

Amid dramatic scenes on Capitol Hill, Democrats reached the 216 simple majority – four seats of the lower chamber of congress are currently vacant – required to impeach him of abusing his position as president. It then passed a second impeachment article, namely of having obstructed congress.

While it is likely Republicans in the senate will vote against the measure, allowing Mr Trump to remain in office, the move nevertheless marked a rare and grave milestone in the nation’s frequently high-stakes political history.

The vote also represented a personal victory for House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had long opposed impeachment, aware of how divisive it could be. Yet, she opened eight hours of speeches by Republican and Democratic legislators, by saying she had no alternative. “I solemnly and sadly open the debate on impeachment of the president of the United States. If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty,” she said.

“It is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, which is the basis of our democracy.”

The president, desperate to dominate the news agenda, held a noisy rally in the state of Michigan. At the moment the first tally was reached – 20.23 local time [01.23 GMT] – the president was talking in a rambling manner about stock market jitters and his space force. He also insisted to supporters: “We did nothing wrong and we have tremendous support.”

Earlier in the day he had tweeted: “Can you believe that I will be impeached today by the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, AND I DID NOTHING WRONG!”

The president’s undoing dates from a 25 July phone call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky during which Mr Trump asked his newly elected counterpart for a quid pro quo in the form of launching an anti-corruption investigation into former vice president Joe Biden, and his son.

Republicans have long accused Mr Biden of improperly using his position to out a prosecutor said to represent a threat to an energy company, on whose board his son sat.

In an whistleblower complaint, believed to have been made by a member of the US intelligence community and which became public in September, Mr Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were said to have have used as leverage the prospect of a visit to Washington DC, and the unfreezing of almost $400m (£305m) in military aid, agreed by congress to help Ukraine confront a long-running threat from Moscow.

Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and claimed his call with the leader of Ukraine was “beautiful”.

Democrats, who were already investigating the president over issues emanating from Robert Mueller’s two-year probe, that concluded there was no collision between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, to include the Ukraine accusations.

Those enquiries resulted in two articles of impeachment – one for abuse power for allegedly pressuring the president of Ukraine and endangering national security for his own political ends, and a second for obstruction of congress.

“In the history of the republic, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House to investigate “high crimes and misdemeanours”, says the second of the two articles.

Unlike all previous presidential impeachment attempts, Wednesday’s vote did not feature a single member of the House minority party who broke with party leadership.

While Ms Pelosi has allowed Democrats the freedom to vote their consciences, a source close to Republican Whip Steve Scalise said he kept all Republican members in line with a weeks-long whip operation, including weekly meetings since Democrats announced their impeachment inquiry. One independent member of the House, former Republican Justin Amash, voted in favour of the two articles.

In the end, a total of two Democrats voted against the first article, and three members voted against the second. There had been expectations, that as many as half-a-dozen swing seat members of the party may vote against impeachment.

Although numerous Republicans accused Democrats of impeaching Mr Trump out of hatred or political animus, House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern told The Independent that such an explanation was what he considered a “a bull**** argument”.

“That’s not real,” Mr McGovern said. “We have members from districts that Trump won, they’re voting their conscience. If it was as trivial as ‘I don’t like him’, they wouldn’t be risking their political careers... This is not about whether you like the president or not, this is about whether the president should be impeached.”