Historic impeachment vote set for next week
The House judiciary committee has approved two articles of impeachment against US President Donald Trump, officially charging him with ‘‘abuse of power’’ and ‘‘obstruction of Congress’’ in a historic step toward removing him from office.
With the party-line 23-17 vote yesterday, Trump became just the fourth president in US history to face impeachment for ‘‘high crimes and misdemeanours’’.
The committee took just 10 minutes to approve both articles, following a 14-hour session the previous day, teeing up a historymaking floor vote next week and a Senate trial in January to determine Trump’s fate.
The first impeachment article alleges that Trump abused his power by withholding military aid and a critical White House meeting from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while pressuring him to launch political investigations targeting Democrats. Trump’s blanket refusal to cooperate with the Democratic investigation is the basis of the ‘‘obstruction of Con- gress’’ article.
Trump, expressing confidence that the Senate would acquit him, dismissed the vote as ‘‘an embarrassment to this country’’.
Judiciary committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and other Democrats said it was a ‘‘solemn and sad’’ moment as they cast their votes. But the sense of sobriety quickly gave way to flashes of anger as Democrats lashed out against the man who holds immense sway over how the Senate trial might proceed: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, the Republican Kentucky senator all but guaranteed a Trump acquittal, saying there was ‘‘zero chance’’ the president would be removed from office. He promised ‘‘total coordination’’ with the White House and Trump’s defence team. ‘‘We all know how it’s going to end.’’
Those remarks – and McConnell’s pledge to ‘‘take my cues from the president’s lawyers’’ – infuriated House Democrats. Many said the upper chamber appeared to be rigged in the president’s favour.
‘‘We are supposed to expect [McConnell] to manage a fair and impartial impeachment inquiry? I think he should recuse himself,’’ said Florida Congresswoman Val Demings.
It was a sign that the partisan brinkmanship that locked the judiciary committee in hours of heated debate over impeachment this week could spill over into the Senate, shaping the contours of the trial expected to take place in January.
The full House of Representatives vote on impeachment, expected to take place on Thursday, is likely to fall largely along partisan lines.
It will be the culmination of the House’s three-month investigation, which has featured dramatic testimony from civil servants, an anonymous whistleblower from the US intelligence community, and hundreds of tweets by a president determined to disrupt the process.
Senate Majority Leader
Trump has said he wants the Senate to interrogate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Trump’s push to have Zelensky investigate both men is at the heart of the abuse of power charge he now faces.
The president is also being influenced by his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who recently travelled to Ukraine in an attempt to do his own investigation of the Bidens. Giuliani met with Trump at the White House yesterday just before the judiciary committee’s vote.
The House has impeached only two presidents in history: Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill
Clinton in 1998. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the full House could vote on articles of impeachment in the Watergate scandal. Both Johnson and Clinton were acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.
Speaking to reporters during an Oval Office visit by Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benitez, Trump said impeachment would benefit him in the end.
‘‘The people are absolutely disgusted. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.’’ He ticked off several now-familiar terms he’s used to describe the process, including ‘‘witch hunt’’, ‘‘hoax’’ and ‘‘sham’’.
McConnell’s comments about coordinating with White House lawyers forced Republicans to defend their handling of the impeachment process. Many Democrats pointed out that senators must take an oath to ‘‘do impartial justice’’ once the impeachment trial begins.
‘‘[I will] take my cues from the president’s lawyers.’’ Mitch McConnell,