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The President of the United State of America, Donald Trump has been impeached by the United State House of Representatives in a vote count of 230:197. Here we bring you all you need to know about his impeachment and the way forward.
President Donald Trump impeached
United States President, Donald Trump has now been formally impeached by the House of Representatives, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The vote followed weeks of testimony, related to his dealings with Ukraine. 230 to 197 votes in the Democratic-majority House saw to the impeachment of the US president.
Trump now becomes the third president in US history to be impeached.
He will, however, remain in office until he is tried and convicted by the senate.
It is an unlikely scenario because his Republican party has control of the upper chamber and are likely to acquit him.
If he remains in office after the Senate trial, Trump will be joining a rare group of two other American presidents — Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — who were impeached but saved by the Senate.
President Trump reacts to his impeachment, reveals plans [VIDEO]
President Donald Trump has blasted the Democrats over his impeachment.
Trump was formally impeached by the House of Representatives, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The vote followed weeks of testimonies related to his dealings with Ukraine. 230 to 197 votes in the Democratic-majority House saw to the impeachment of the US president.
Trump now becomes the third president in US history to be impeached.
He will, however, remain in office until he is tried and convicted by the senate.
He was impeached while on stage at a “Merry Christmas” rally in Michigan.
Speaking, Trump described the impeachment as a shame to democracy, claiming that the Democrats have “branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame.”
Trump likened the impeachment proceedings to a “political suicide march”, CNN reports.
According to him, the Democrats have declared war on American democracy with his impeachment.
“In reality, they are not after me but after you. I’m just in the way
“You are declaring war on American democracy. You are the one interfering. We did nothing wrong; this is just an excuse.
“You are the one obstructing justice. With today’s illegal unconstitutional and partisan impeachment, the do-nothing Democrats are declaring their deep hatred and disdain for the American voters.
“Have you seen my polls?” Trump said.
“After three years of sinister witch hunts, hoaxes, scams, the House Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans,” he said.
President Trump further called on his supporters to “vote the house speaker, Pelosi out of office.
“Americans will show up by the tens of millions next year to vote Pelosi the hell out of office,” Trump added.
US: Presidency reacts to Trump’s impeachment
The US presidency also known as the White House has hit back at lawmakers after President Donald Trump was impeached, slamming the “illegitimate articles of impeachment” and voicing confidence the president would be acquitted in the Senate.
“Democrats have chosen to proceed on this partisan basis in spite of the fact that the President did absolutely nothing wrong,” spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement, calling the votes in the House of Representatives an “unconstitutional travesty”.
Grisham said that there were no fact witnesses in the hearing and alleged bias by the Democrats.
“The President is confident the Senate will restore regular order, fairness, and due process, all of which were ignored in the House proceedings.
”He is prepared for the next steps and confident that he will be fully exonerated,” the statement said, referring to the upcoming trial in the upper chamber
Trump impeachment: What happens next?
The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to impeach US President Donald Trump for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power over his dealings with Ukraine.
Trump is only the third United States president to be impeached. No president has ever been removed from office via the impeachment process.
The landmark votes on Wednesday set up a likely January trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Trump is expected to be acquitted.
As politicians move to the trial phase, here’s what to expect next:
1. On what charges was Trump impeached?
Trump has been impeached on charges that he abused his power in office and obstructed Congress during the impeachment investigation.
Democrats accuse Trump of pressuring Ukraine to open an investigation into the president’s political rival and former vice president, Joe Biden, who is also a frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. They also charge that the president obstructed their investigation by refusing to comply with subpoenas and directing members of his administration to do the same.
The impeachment inquiry, launched in September following a whistle-blower complaint, was centred on a July 25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
Trump also wanted Zelenskyy to investigate a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.
READ ALSO: Donald Trump reacts to Nigerian who drew him
At the time of the call, the Trump administration was withholding nearly $400m in Congress-approved military assistance from Ukraine.
Citing testimony by current and former US officials, Democrats also accuse Trump of leveraging a White House meeting that Zelenskyy wanted in exchange for the investigations.
2. What is a Senate trial?
The articles of impeachment are now expected to be sent to the Senate, where senators will consider evidence, hear witnesses and vote to acquit or convict the president. The chief justice of the US Supreme Court presides over the trial.
A two-thirds majority vote is required in the 100-member Senate to convict and remove a president from office. A conviction appears unlikely in the case of Trump.
The Senate is made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. At least 20 Republicans would have to vote with all Democrats and the two independents to remove the president from office.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated that he would like swift proceedings, but the president has said he would not mind a robust trial, with testimony from a number of witnesses, including Biden and the whistle-blower whose complaint led to the impeachment inquiry.
On Tuesday, McConnell appeared to reject the Democrats’ request for new witnesses in the trial, saying the Senate would not “do House Democrats’ homework for them” or go on a “fishing expedition” after the House impeachment process.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has said he wants to hear from four additional witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
McConnell said on Tuesday he hopes to meet Schumer soon to determine the next steps. He added that he is “optimistic” that Republicans and Democrats can agree on a “phase one” of the trial, which would include the presentation of the case and defence.
“We’ll see at that point whether there are 51 members of the Senate who want to take one of two directions – either going in the direction of witnesses or going in the direction of voting on the articles of impeachment,” McConnell was quoted by Reuters News Agency as saying.
But following Wednesday’s impeachment votes, Pelosi said she would wait, for now, to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
US media have reported that some House Democrats are urging Pelosi to withhold the transmittal of the articles until the “appropriate time”.
Pelosi on Wednesday evaded questions about when she plans to send the articles to the Senate.
“It would have been our intention” to send the articles to the Senate, but “we’ll see what happens over there,” Pelosi told reporters.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said, referring to members who will serve as House prosecutors in a Senate trial. “So far we have not seen anything that looks fair to us”.
Withholding the articles of impeachment may give the Democrats leverage when it comes to setting the procedures for the trial.
Pelosi said Democrats will make a decision on next steps as “a group”.
3. When will a Senate trial take place?
Once the Senate receives the articles of impeachment, a trial can begin.
No firm date for a Senate trial has been set, but McConnell has said it will be the chamber’s “first order of business” upon returning to Washington, DC, in the new year.
Senate Democrats have proposed a trial plan that would see proceedings begin on January 6. Presentations by House managers, who would effectively work as prosecutors, would begin on January 9 under this plan. It is unlikely that Senate Republicans would agree to the Democrats’ exact proposal.
McConnell is scheduled to address impeachment on the Senate floor on Thursday at 9:30am (14:30 GMT).
4. Who would become president if Trump was removed?
In the unlikely event that the Senate convicts and removes Trump from office, Vice President Mike Pence would become president and complete Trump’s term, which ends on January 20, 2021.
In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you —Trump
President Donald Trump has tweeted at his 67.7 million Twitter followers that those seeking to impeach him were not really after him as an individual.
“In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you,” the impeached president had tweeted.
On December 18, 2019 at 8.34 PM Eastern Time, the United States House of Representatives had impeached Mr. Trump on two charges.
The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee had approved two charges against Trump.
The first charge bordered on abuse of power. The president was accused of trying to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rival, Democratic presidential contender, Joe Biden.
The second charge says the president had obstructed Congress, by failing to co-operate with the House’s impeachment investigation.
Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, saying, he had been treated worse than “those accused in the Salem witch trials.”
The president’s latest tweet was in capital letters and accompanied with a dark photograph of himself.
See the tweet:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Trump makes history as third American president to be impeached
President Donald Trump was impeached for abuse of power in a historic vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, setting up a Senate trial on removing him from office after three turbulent years.
By a 230 to 197 vote in the Democratic-majority House, the 45th US president became just the third occupant of the White House in American history to be impeached.
Democrats said they had “no choice” but to formally charge the 73-year-old Republican, whose impeachment along stark party lines places an indelible stain on his record while driving a spike ever deeper into the US political divide.
“What is at risk here is the very idea of America,” said Adam Schiff, the lawmaker who led the impeachment inquiry, ahead of the vote.
Trump will now stand trial in the Senate, where his Republicans hold a solid majority and are expected to exonerate him.
The House vote came four months after a whistleblower blew open the scandal of Trump pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate his potential White House challenger in 2020, the veteran Democrat Joe Biden.
After a marathon 10-hour debate, lawmakers also voted 229-198 to approve the second article of impeachment facing Trump — for obstructing the congressional probe into his Ukraine dealings.
Trump spent the first part of the day holed up at the White House, tweeting in frustration, but on Wednesday night the president was on friendlier territory.
In an extraordinary split screen moment, as the House was casting votes to impeach him, thousands of Trump’s most fervent supporters were cheering him at a rally in Michigan where he railed against a “radical left” he said was “consumed with hatred.”
“The Democrats are declaring their deep hatred and disdain for the American voter,” Trump said to boos and cheers.
“They’ve been trying to impeach me from day one. They’ve been trying to impeach me from before I ran,” he said.
“Four more years, four more years,” the crowd chanted back.
Despite testimony from 17 officials that Trump leveraged his office for political gain, the president maintained his innocence throughout the impeachment inquiry — denouncing it as an “attempted coup” and an “assault on America.”
Battle opens over Senate trial –
Both sides were already gearing up for a battle over the Senate trial, where Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has the upper hand in setting rules and has already said he will coordinate with Trump’s team in doing so.
That could lead to a trial as short as two weeks, which by acquitting the president could turn impeachment into a political win in the run-up to the November 2020 election.
Democrats declared after Wednesday’s vote that McConnell needs testimony from four current and former White House aides with direct knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine dealings — and who he blocked from testifying in the House.
“The question is now whether Senator McConnell will allow a fair trial in the Senate, whether the majority leader will allow a trial that involves witnesses and testimony and documents,” said Schiff.
Pelosi hinted that the House leaders could hold off sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate to pressure McConnell on the witness issue.
“So far, we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” she told reporters. “We’ll decide what that dynamic is.”
“But right now, the president is impeached.”
Putin says Trump impeachment based on ‘made-up grounds’
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the impeachment of Donald Trump was based on “made-up” grounds, adding he did not believe it marked the end of the US president.
“It still needs to go through the Senate, where the Republicans have a majority,” Putin said after the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power.
“And it is hardly likely that they are going to push out of office a representative of their own party, on grounds that are absolutely made-up,” he added.
Speaking at his marathon end-of-year news conference, Putin described the events in the US legislature as “simply the continuation of a internal political fight” between Democrats and Republicans.
He reproached the journalist who asked the question for “speaking about Trump as if he is finished”.
Trump was impeached Wednesday over a telephone conversation where he pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate his potential White House challenger in 2020, the veteran Democrat Joe Biden.
Putin indicated he believed this was only a pretext used by the Democrats to impeach Trump after failing to corner him over claims that Moscow interfered in the presidential elections that brought him to power.
“The Democrats accused Trump of a plot with Russia, and then it emerged that there was no kind of plot. It could not be the basis of an impeachment,” said Putin.
“Then they thought up some kind of pressure on Ukraine.”
