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With Historic Debate, House Moves Toward Impeaching Trump Trump, Impeached for Abuse of Power, Faces a Senate Trial
(32 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats clashed fiercely on Wednesday as the House of Representatives barreled toward a historic vote to impeach President Trump, debating a pair of charges that would make him the third president in history to face removal by the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach President Trump for abuse of power, making him the third president in history to be charged with committing high crimes and misdemeanors and face removal by the Senate.
The epic debate on the House floor reflected the deep polarization gripping American politics in the Trump era, but the outcome was considered certain. Majority Democrats were expected to push through two impeachment articles, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, over the vehement protests of Republicans. The charges stemmed from Mr. Trump’s attempts to use the powers of the United States government to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. On a day of constitutional consequence and raging partisan tension, the vote on the first of two articles of impeachment fell largely along party lines after a prolonged debate that reflected the deep polarization gripping American politics in the Trump era.
A vote on Wednesday morning to lay the ground rules for the proceeding signaled that the final outcome — like the debate itself — would fall almost purely along partisan lines, with nearly every Democrat in favor of impeaching Mr. Trump. The test vote was 228 to 197, with just two Democrats voting with Republicans in opposition. It began six hours of a passionate back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans, as they warred over whether to charge the president with offenses that could lead to his ouster less than a year before he faces re-election. Virtually all Democrats supported the article on abuse of power, which accused Mr. Trump of corruptly using the levers of government to solicit election assistance from Ukraine in the form of investigations to discredit his Democratic political rivals. Republicans were united in opposition. The vote, gaveled to a close by Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the House rostrum, was 230-197, with one Democrat, Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, voting “present.”
Immediately after the test vote, the clerk of the House read aloud the two articles in full to a rapt House chamber, concluding by reciting, “President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office.” A second vote on the charge of obstruction of Congress was ongoing.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, dressed in all black and wearing a small golden brooch that was a replica of the mace of the House of Representatives — a ceremonial staff that represents the chamber’s power — began consideration of the charges by appealing to every member to uphold their oaths to “protect and defend” the Constitution. The vote set the stage for a historic trial beginning early next year in the Senate, which will have final say — 10 months before Mr. Trump faces re-election — on whether to acquit the 45th president or convict and remove him from office. Acquittal in the Republican-controlled chamber is likely, but the proceeding is certain to aggravate the political and cultural fault lines in the country that Mr. Trump’s presidency has brought into dramatic relief.
“Today, as speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment of the president of the United States,” she said. “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice.” On Wednesday, Democrats characterized his impeachment as an urgent action to stop a corrupt president whose misdeeds had unfolded in plain view from damaging the country any further.
The charges against Mr. Trump stemmed from his effort to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats, while withholding nearly $400 million in vital military assistance for the country and a White House meeting for its new president. “Over the course of the last three months, we have found incontrovertible evidence that President Trump abused his power by pressuring the newly elected president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into President Trump’s political rival,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the Intelligence Committee chairman, who led the impeachment inquiry.
They originated in September when an anonymous whistle-blower complaint came to light that called Mr. Trump’s actions part of a scheme to use his presidential powers to solicit foreign interference on his won behalf in the 2020 election. But that account was soon bolstered by a reconstructed transcript of a July phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which shows Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor” and investigate Mr. Biden and other Democrats. “The president and his men plot on,” Mr. Schiff said. “The danger persists. The risk is real. Our democracy is at peril.”
And over a period of weeks, in impeachment hearings launched by House Democrats, a parade of diplomats and other administration officials confirmed and expanded on the whistle-blower’s story, outlining a wide-ranging attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to bend United States policy on Ukraine toward carrying out what one former White House official called “a domestic political errand” for the president’s personal benefit. Far from showing contrition or contemplating resignation, as his predecessors have done in the face of impeachment, Mr. Trump instead offered an indignant defense as the House weighed his fate, raging on Twitter from the White House.
On Wednesday, Republicans accused the Democrats, who fought their way back from political oblivion in 2016 to win control of the House last year, of abusing the power voters had invested in them by manufacturing a case against a president they never viewed as legitimate. Though they conceded few of them, they insisted the facts against Mr. Trump nonetheless fell woefully short of impeachment. “SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS,” the president wrote as the historic debate took place on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!”
“Today, a dangerous precedent will be set,” said Representative Will Hurd of Texas, one of a handful of Republicans who has been willing to criticize Mr. Trump’s conduct. “Impeachment becoming a weaponized political tool. We know how this partisan process will end this evening. But what happens tomorrow?” Regardless of the outcome of a Senate trial, the impeachment vote in the House puts an indelible stain on Mr. Trump’s presidency that cannot be wiped from the public consciousness with a barrage of tweets or an angry tirade in front of thousands of his cheering supporters at a campaign rally.
The question loomed over the proceedings, underscoring its stakes for the president — whose legacy will be indelibly marked by the coming vote — and members of both political parties. Democrats, including the most vulnerable moderates, embraced the articles of impeachment with the full knowledge that doing so could damage them politically, potentially even costing them control of the House. Republicans tethered themselves closely to the president as they have since he took office, yoking their political brands and fortunes to his. It did not grow out of the two-year investigation into Russian election meddling by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, or the seemingly endless series of other accusations of corruption and misconduct that have plagued his White House: embracing Russian election interference, tax evasion, profiting from the presidency, payoffs to a pornographic film actress and fraudulent activities by his charitable foundation.
Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, predicted: “We win on process and we win on the facts. Why? Because the American people will see through this.” Instead, the existential threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency centered around a half-hour phone call in July in which he pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats, at the same time he was withholding nearly $400 million in vital military assistance for the country and a White House meeting.
Far from showing contrition or contemplating resignation in the face of a certain impeachment, as his predecessors have done, Mr. Trump instead offered an indignant defense from the White House, delivered over social media, his favored means of communication. Congress learned about the call after an anonymous C.I.A. official lodged a whistle-blower complaint in August — pulling a string that helped unravel an effort by the president and his allies to pressure a foreign government for help in smearing a political rival. Over a period of weeks this fall, a parade of diplomats and other administration officials confirmed and expanded on those revelations.
“SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS,” the president wrote on Twitter as lawmakers argued over his fate. “THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!” When Congress found out about the scheme and sought to investigate, the president ordered his administration to defy its every request, leading to what the House said Tuesday was a violation of the separation of powers and a de facto assertion by Mr. Trump that he was above the law.
While the tenor of the momentous occasion was somber, there was little doubt about the results of the vote, and a sense of inevitability hung over Washington as Mr. Trump awaited his all but certain impeachment, which would send the charges to the Senate for a trial on whether to acquit him or convict and remove him from office. United in their opposition, Republicans accused the Democrats, who fought their way back from political oblivion in 2016 to win the House in 2018, of misusing the power voters had invested in them to harangue a president they never viewed as legitimate by manufacturing a case against him. Though they conceded few of them, they insisted the facts against Mr. Trump nonetheless fell woefully short of impeachment.
Regardless of the outcome of that proceeding, impeachment will leave a stain on the presidency of Mr. Trump, who for nearly three years has dodged a seemingly endless series of allegations of corruption and misconduct: Embracing Russian election interference, tax evasion, profiting from the presidency, payoffs to a pornographic film actress and fraudulent activities by his charitable foundation. “When all is said and done, when the history of this impeachment is written, it will be said that my Washington Democrat friends couldn’t bring themselves to work with Donald Trump, so they consoled themselves instead by silencing the will of those who did, the American people,” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina.
In the House chamber, Democrats rose, one by one, to argue forcefully for the president’s impeachment, asserting that Mr. Trump’s actions had put at risk the integrity of the 2020 election and the country itself. Through the course of the inquiry, even as Republicans raged against the process and sought to offer benign explanations for Mr. Trump’s conduct, none disputed the central facts that served as its basis: that he asked Ukraine’s president to “do us a favor” and investigate Mr. Biden, a prospective rival in the 2020 campaign, and other Democrats.
When lawmakers found out about his pressure campaign on Ukraine and sought to investigate, the president ordered his administration to defy every request from Congress, leading to what Democrats charged was a violation of the separation of powers and a de facto assertion by Mr. Trump that he was above the law. Mr. Trump’s impeachment had the potential to change the trajectory of his presidency and redefine an already volatile political landscape. Democrats, including the most vulnerable moderates, embraced the articles of impeachment with the full knowledge that doing so could damage them politically, potentially even costing them control of the House. Republicans tethered themselves closely to Mr. Trump as they have since he took office, yoking their political brands and fortunes to his. The debate proceeded in historic terms in the well of the House, even as an odd sense of inevitability hung over Washington about Mr. Trump’s fate.
Warning that he posed a continuing threat, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the Intelligence Committee chairman who led the impeachment inquiry, said the president’s actions toward Ukraine ominously echoed his embrace of Russian election assistance in 2016 and subsequent efforts to thwart federal investigators scrutinizing it. “Today, as speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment of the president of the United States,” Ms. Pelosi, dressed in all black, said as debate opened on the articles around noon. “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice.”
“The president and his men plot on. The danger persists. The risk is real. Our democracy is at peril,” Mr. Schiff said, warning that Republicans would “rue the day” they disregarded the facts his investigation collected to defend Mr. Trump. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, has already made clear he views the House’s case as “weak” and would prefer a speedy trial in January that does not call any additional fact witnesses. Doing so increases the likelihood that Congress will simply never hear from several senior government officials with knowledge of the Ukraine matter who avoided House testimony.
“Donald J. Trump sacrificed our national security in an effort to cheat in the next election,” Mr. Schiff said, “and for that and his continued efforts to seek foreign interference in our elections, he must be impeached.” Impeachment traces its origins to monarchical England, but the framers of the Constitution confined its use on presidents to rare occasions, when his actions corrupted the public interest for personal ones. Only twice has the House previously impeached a president, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton 1998. President Richard M. Nixon resigned in 1974 rather than face such a consequence.
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the party’s longtime third-ranking leader, implored his colleagues to hold Mr. Trump accountable by casting votes for impeachment, saying, “Today we have a president who seems to believe he is a king or above the law.” Johnson remained in office by a single vote in 1868. Mr. Clinton more soundly beat the charges, with no more than half of the Senate voting for conviction after more than a month of deliberations. The trial of Mr. Trump is likely to reach a similar outcome, but it could do so much more quickly, with some Senate Republicans discussing the possibility that the case could be resolved in little more than a week.
But even as most Democrats labored to couch their support for impeachment in terms of the Constitution and the separation of powers, some in their ranks argued that Mr. Trump deserved to be removed by Congress for his policies.
When his turn came, Representative Al Green of Texas, the first Democrat to introduce articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump in 2017, spoke beside a poster-size photograph of a crying migrant girl at the southwestern border, emblazoned with the words “IMPEACH NOW.” Mr. Green said he would vote yes “for the sake of the many who are suffering.” As he did in the face of past accusations, Mr. Trump, 73, railed against impeachment as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax,” attacking his adversaries with a viciousness rarely heard from previous presidents.
Democrats defeated a pair of Republican attempts to derail the impeachment debate before it got underway, dispatching with them in strictly party-line votes. Just two minutes after the House was gaveled into session, Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus, moved to adjourn, forcing an early-morning roll call vote. Republicans immediately followed with a resolution asserting that the Democrats who led the impeachment inquiry “willfully and intentionally” violated House rules. “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” the president seethed in an angry impeachment eve letter to Ms. Pelosi.
Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, who was tapped by the speaker to oversee the proceedings from the House rostrum, briskly dispensed with other Republican parliamentary maneuvers to keep things marching forward. In Mr. Trump’s reality, reinforced by the conservative cable news programs that swirl around him throughout the day, his three years in the White House have been more successful than any other. Wednesday’s impeachment intrudes on that, forcing the president and those around him to confront a different narrative, one in which he has — in the words of the articles of impeachment — “betrayed the nation” and acted “in a manner grossly incompatible with self governance and the rule of law.”
But the Republican objections went well beyond the process and to the substance of the impeachment charges. Despite the extensive evidence uncovered by the House Intelligence Committee about Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine, his allies in the Capitol insisted he had done nothing wrong. “Whether Donald Trump leaves in one month, one year or five years, this impeachment is permanent,” said Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California. “It will follow him around for the rest of his life, and history books will record it.”
“There is no proof — none! — that the president has committed an impeachable offense,” said Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona. The absolutist defense by many members of the Republican Party and the partisan nature of Wednesday’s vote underscored the remarkable hold that Mr. Trump, who has never commanded the support of a majority of the nation, has come to have over the party, remaking it in his image.
One Republican, Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, on Wednesday compared Mr. Trump with Jesus Christ, saying that the son of God had been “afforded more rights” by Pontius Pilate than Democrats gave the president. One Republican, Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, compared Mr. Trump on Wednesday with Jesus Christ, saying that the son of God had been “afforded more rights” by Pontius Pilate than Democrats had given the president.
Mr. Trump was invited to participate in the House impeachment inquiry, but declined to do so, saying he was eager for the matter to reach the Senate, where he would be treated fairly. Democrats’ most fervent supporters have fantasized since Inauguration Day 2017 about impeaching Mr. Trump, an extreme remedy for the ultimate insurgent they believed was shredding American institutions in his self interest. The debate reached a new pitch this year when Democrats reclaimed control of the House after nearly a decade and awaited the results of a two-year Justice Department investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign had conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.
In the Senate, where a trial is likely to begin after the new year, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said on Wednesday morning that Democrats were poised to “misuse the solemn process of impeachment to blow off partisan steam.” Mr. McConnell has already said that he views the case against Mr. Trump as “weak” and has predicted a speedy acquittal. But as the left pushed harder for Mr. Trump’s ouster, Democratic leaders resisted. “He’s just not worth it,” Ms. Pelosi said in March. The Russia investigation fizzled when the special counsel declined to recommend charges, even though his report detailed at least 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump when he tried to thwart the inquiry. By the time lawmakers returned to Washington this fall after a summer break, impeachment appeared all but dead.
Given Mr. McConnell’s position, some Democrats have advocated that Ms. Pelosi temporarily hold back the House’s charges rather than send them quickly to the Senate, as leverage to try to extract promises for a fair trial or simply to deny Mr. Trump the satisfaction of an acquittal. But while Ms. Pelosi was not expected to transmit the articles immediately, it was not clear whether she was considering deliberately delaying the move. Ms. Pelosi’s calculations — and public opinion — shifted abruptly in September, when the C.IA. whistle-blower arrived on the House’s doorstep.
Over lunch, Republican senators huddled with Kellyanne Conway, Mr. Trump’s counselor, to prepare for the trial. She delivered a presentation of polls that the White House argued showed public support for Mr. Trump and his party. The inquiry it prompted moved with alacrity, even as Democrats did not have an independent counsel or special prosecutor on whose work they could build. Instead, the House Intelligence Committee called senior American diplomats and White House officials for questioning and requested reams of documents.
In private and then in publicly televised hearings — and all in defiance of White House orders — they outlined a wide-ranging attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to bend United States policy on Ukraine toward carrying out what one former White House official called “a domestic political errand” on the president’s own behalf.
Fueling the obstruction of Congress charge, a dozen more witnesses, some with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s actions, were blocked from speaking to investigators and the Trump administration refused to produce a single document under subpoena.
As the facts tumbled out into the open, there were moments when Republicans in the House and Senate flirted with casting their lot against the president. After the acting White House chief of staff said from the White House in October that Mr. Trump had withheld military aid in part to extract at least one politically beneficial investigation from Ukraine, Representative Francis Rooney said he was open to impeachment. But on Wednesday, he joined every Republican in voting no.
Testimony weeks later in November by Gordon D. Sondland, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, that there had been a quid quo pro around a White House meeting and maybe around the foreign aid money prompted momentary fears of a mass defection. It did not materialize.
If anything, the process underscored the extent to which the nation is pulling apart into two, with each side claiming its own news sources and fact sets that make meaningful debate between Democrats and Republicans over the significance of president’s conduct almost impossible. Public opinion polls show that nation as closely divided over Mr. Trump’s impeachment and removal as it was on Election Day 2016.
On Wednesday, neither lawmakers nor aides to Mr. Trump foresaw a resolution.
“We know how this partisan process will end this evening,” said Representative Will Hurd of Texas, one of a handful of Republicans willing to criticize Mr. Trump’s conduct, who is retiring from Congress. “But what happens tomorrow?”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.