Trump impeachment: House impeaches president in historic vote along party lines
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The House has voted to impeach Donald Trump, making him the third president in American history to receive such a censure.
After roughly eight hours of debate, the House of Representatives gathered to vote and ultimately charged him with abusing the power of his office by attempting to extort a political favour from Ukraine. The House then voted on a second article of impeachment, approving formal charges that Mr Trump had obstructed Congress during the subsequent congressional investigation into his conduct.
The Senate will now take up the approved impeachment articles in the new year.
Defiant as ever, Mr Trump walked onstage at a rally in Michigan just as the House began voting — and was bragging about his Space Force and mocking stock market jitters as the first article of impeachement was approved. Before it became official, as the vote crept towards approving the first article of impeachment, Mr Trump was interrupted by a protester, who he suggested was treated too well by security forces — and that they should have been tougher on her.
Before the vote and rally, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius described a letter sent by Mr Trump to House speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday as “the most unpresidential presidential document ever written” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe after rallies backing the impeachment process were held in cities across the country on Tuesday evening.
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Wow. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is basically leading his caucus in a call-and-response of cheers because “Donald Trump is the President of the United States”. It’s something I’d expect to see in North Korea, not here.
Mr McCarthy is making a plea to American values, and self-determination.
"Will we let impeachment become an exercise of raw political power regardless of if it damages our country?" he said, before attacking Democrats and the media for what he calls an attempt to "normalize" the impeachment process.
"This is their last attempt to stop the Trump presidency."
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Mike Pence just took the stage ahead of Donald Trump's speech there.
In Michigan, Mr Pence is touting his Mr Trump's record — including putting conservative judges on federal benches, and defending religious rights.
Mr McCarthy, meanwhile, just praised Mr Trump for providing lethal aid to Ukraine, which Barack Obama refused to do during his administration.
Mr McCarthy says that impeachment of Congess' time, and taxpayer dollars, when the House could have been doing other things.
Worth noting, that Democrats and the White House recently came to agreement on the USMCA.
Mr McCarthy also asks if they are there to appease socialists in Congress, to which Republicans booed and said no.
Mr McCarthy ends his speech by painting the impeachment vote as one that shows whether Congress trusts the American people, or if they want to overturn their 2016 vote (as many Republicans have made today).
He argues that not impeaching the president would mean a strong economy.
Adam Schiff is now delivering the final remarks of the night before the vote.
What Trump is facing: Two articles of impeachment, Mr Schiff noted.
The first — that Mr Trump abused his powers as president to coerce a foreign power to "intervene in our election by smearing his opponent," Mr Schiff said.
Mr Schiff said that the defense of Mr Trump is "hard for me to follow" and said that it amounts to "Why should we care?"
"Well first of all, we should care about our allies, we should care about Ukraine, we should care about a country struggling to be free in a Democracy. We used to care about Democracy, we used to care about our allies, we used to stand up to Putin and Russia. We used to. I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to," Mr Schiff said.
"Article Two charges the president of the United States with obstructing the Congress," Mr Schiff continued.
He noted that the White House has denied documents to investigators. He continued to say that Republicans similarly have an argument of "why should we care".
Rep. Adam Schiff, delivering closing remarks for Democrats, asks Republicans what they’ll do when the next president defies a congressional subpoena — many of them shout “go to court!”
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