Trump impeachment: House impeaches president in historic vote along party lines
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Your support makes all the difference.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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Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, just claimed that Democrats "hate this president...and those who voted for him". It's an argument Republicans have made throughout this process.
Earlier today, The Independent asked House Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern, D-Mass., about whether that Republican argument had any validity. Here's what he said:
"That's what I'd call a bullshit argument -- that's not real. 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".
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is now speaking. He was stripped of his committee assignments earlier this year because of comments he made which were widely interpreted as a defense of white supremacists.
Republican Roger Marshall says “the only thing President Trump is guilty of” is doing what he said he’d do. In a way that’s correct, because Mr Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he’d accept foreign help in the 2020 election.
The Trump War Room Twitter account (which, overall, serves to drive donations) is alive and well today, and has been tweeting throughout today's debate.
Here's some of the latest:
"Clinton repented. Trump insists that he did nothing wrong," said Elanor Holmes-Norton, who represents Washington, DC. Ms Holmes-Norton cannot vote, however, which she noted.
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