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The US House of Representatives voted by a margin of 232 to 197 to impeach Donald Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection, making him the first president in history to have been impeached twice. Ten House Republicans voted in favour of the motion
Full report: Trump impeached a second time More
Key events
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4.36pm EST16:36
Trump becomes the first US president to be impeached twice
4.25pm EST16:25
Article of impeachment reaches majority level of support
3.54pm EST15:54
House votes on article of impeachment against Trump
3.51pm EST15:51
Seventh House Republican says he will support impeachment
3.37pm EST15:37
McConnell indicates he is open to convicting Trump
2.09pm EST14:09
Statement from the president
2.05pm EST14:05
Afternoon summary
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4.48pm EST16:48
The most surprising Republican “yes” vote on impeachment came from Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Before the vote, Rice did not offer any indication that he was planning to support impeachment, and he was not considered one of the likely “yes” votes.
Rice has not yet put out a statement explaining his vote, but this tweet from last week, sent during the violent riot at the Capitol, captures his frustration with Donald Trump.
Congressman Tom Rice
(@RepTomRice)
To all my friends back home, I am fine. Capitol Police evacuated us from the Capitol Building. DC is in chaos. This will accomplish nothing.Where is the President!? He must ask people to disperse and restore calm now.
January 6, 2021
4.40pm EST16:40
Here are the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection:
John Katko of New York.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.
Fred Upton of Michigan.
Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state.
Dan Newhouse of Washington state.
Peter Meijer of Michigan.
Tom Rice of South Carolina.
Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio.
David Valadao of California.
The Republicans’ votes made this the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in history. In comparison, five Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998.
4.36pm EST16:36
Trump becomes the first US president to be impeached twice
The House has voted to impeach Donald Trump on the charge of incitement of insurrection, after the president incited a violent mob to storm the Capitol last week, resulting in five deaths.
The final vote was 232-197, with 10 House Republicans supporting the measure.
Trump has become the first president in US history to ever be impeached by the House twice.
The matter will now go before the Senate, which will decide whether Trump should be convicted and removed from office.
The trial will likely conclude after Joe Biden takes office anyway, but a conviction would prevent Trump from running for president again.
4.26pm EST16:26
A tenth House Republican, David Valadao of California, has voted “yes” on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump.
The vote currently stands at 229-195 in favor of impeachment.
Nine members have not yet voted.
4.25pm EST16:25
Article of impeachment reaches majority level of support
The article of impeachment has now reached a majority level of support, with at least 229 House members voting “yes” on impeaching Donald Trump for a second time.
The vote currently stands at 229-194.
But the vote is still ongoing, and members can change their votes until it is gaveled out. Stay tuned.
4.21pm EST16:21
Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, Ann Wagner of Missouri and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania have all voted “no” on impeachment.
The three members were some of the last remaining Republicans who were considered possible “yes” votes, but they have apparently decided against impeaching the president for a second time.
It’s looking like the total number of Republicans supporting impeachment will likely be nine, but we won’t know for sure until the vote is complete.
4.14pm EST16:14
Seven House Republicans have already voted “yes” on impeaching Donald Trump, and at least two more are expected to do so.
Assuming no one charges their vote, this will be the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in US history, as a CBC News reporter noted.
Alexander Panetta
(@Alex_Panetta)
BREAKING: This is now the most *bipartisan* presidential impeachment in American history.Six Republicans have already voted to impeach Trump – the most ever from one party again a president of that same party. Previous record: five Democrats vs Bill Clinton in 1998.
January 13, 2021
4.11pm EST16:11
In his statement explaining his vote in support of impeachment, Anthony Gonzalez also accused Donald Trump of having “abandoned his post” amid the violence at the Capitol.
Gonzalez argued that the president’s failure to act further endangered those present at the Capitol.
The Republican congressman described the president’s actions as “fundamental threats” to American democracy.
4.04pm EST16:04
Two more House Republicans, Tom Rice of South Carolina and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, have voted “yes” on impeaching the president.
Assuming they do not change their votes, they will be the eighth and ninth Republicans to support impeachment.
In a statement, Gonzalez said he was supporting impeachment because Donald Trump “helped organize and incite a mob that attacked the United States Congress”.
Rep. Anthony Gonzalez
(@RepAGonzalez)
See my full statement on impeachment below. pic.twitter.com/pBBYRI2RUP
January 13, 2021
3.54pm EST15:54
House votes on article of impeachment against Trump
The House has now concluded its two hours of debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump.
The chamber has moved on to a roll-call vote on the article, incitement of insurrection.
The measure is expected to pass with the support of all Democrats and at least seven Republicans.
3.51pm EST15:51
Seventh House Republican says he will support impeachment
Peter Meijer, a Republican congressman from Michigan, has become the seventh Republican House member to say he will support the impeachment of Donald Trump.
“The President betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection last week,” Meijer said in a statement. “With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump.”
Rep. Peter Meijer
(@RepMeijer)
President Trump betrayed his oath of office by seeking to undermine our constitutional process, and he bears responsibility for inciting the insurrection we suffered last week. With a heavy heart, I will vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump. pic.twitter.com/SREfFp0nd2
January 13, 2021
Meijer, a freshman congressman, previously said he was considering supporting impeachment, but this is the first time he has clearly said he will do so.
Seven Republicans have now said they will vote to impeach Trump, which means the president will be impeached in a bipartisan vote. When Trump was impeached the first time, only Democrats supported the measure.
3.45pm EST15:45
The debate on the article of impeachment against Donald Trump is now wrapping up, and the House will soon move on to the final vote on impeachment.
Steve Scalise, the House minority whip, was the final Republican speaker, and he applauded the Capitol Police officers who work to protect lawmakers every day. Two Capitol Police officers have died since last week, when a violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.
House members in the chamber stood to applaud the fallen Capitol Police officers, marking a rare moment of bipartisanship during today’s contentious debate.
The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is the final Democratic speaker, and he has repeatedly cited the words of Republican Liz Cheney, who has said she will support impeachment.
“Will we stay silent, will we not stand up and say this is not acceptable?” Hoyer said. “Donald Trump has constructed a glass house of lies, fear-mongering and sedition.”
3.37pm EST15:37
McConnell indicates he is open to convicting Trump
The Guardian’s Daniel Strauss reports:
Mitch McConnell, the top-ranking Republican in the Senate, indicated to colleagues that he is undecided on how he would vote on impeachment.
In a letter to his Senate colleagues sent out Wednesday afternoon, as members of the House moved forward with impeaching Donald Trump, the Kentucky Republican wrote, “while the press has been full of speculation, I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”
The line in his note to Senate colleagues follows The New York Times reporting Tuesday night that McConnell is pleased with Democrats’ move to impeach the president again and has been sharing that sentiment with associates.
McConnell’s openness to impeaching the president, a fellow Republican, is the most significant sign so far that congressional Republican leaders are less resistant to Trump’s impeachment than the last time the president was impeached.
In the House, congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the House Republican Conference chair, said she would vote to impeach Trump. Five other House Republicans have also come out in support of impeachment.
It’s unclear how Senate Republicans will vote. It’s also unclear if McConnell’s openness will offer cover for other Republicans who privately would like to see the president impeached. Two-thirds of senators would have to support conviction in order for him to be removed from office.
3.33pm EST15:33
Congressman Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and a Marine Corps veteran, noted that there are currently more troops in Washington than in Afghanistan.
Aaron Rupar
(@atrupar)
Rep. Moulton: “There are more troops right now in Washington DC than in Afghanistan. And they are here to defend us against the commander in chief, the POTUS and his mob.” pic.twitter.com/bpf9mdWhYi
January 13, 2021
“And they are here to defend us against the commander in chief, the president of the United States and his mob,” Moulton said.
Moulton encouraged his colleagues to look at the National Guard members protecting the Capitol and search for “an ounce of their courage.”
3.17pm EST15:17
Young Kim, a freshman Republican congresswoman who flipped a California district that Donald Trump lost by 10 points, will vote against impeachment.
Young Kim
(@RepYoungKim)
However, I believe impeaching the president now will fail to hold him accountable or allow us to move forward once President-elect Biden is sworn in. This process will only create more fissures in our country as we emerge from some of our darkest days. https://t.co/NK1EdO5xoN pic.twitter.com/IJIlb6oGva
January 13, 2021
“The violence we saw last week was disgusting. Our law enforcement was attacked, lives were lost and more were put in danger. These rioters must be held accountable. Words have consequences and I believe the president should also be held accountable,” Kim said in a statement.
“However, I believe impeaching the president at this time will fail to hold him accountable or allow us to move forward once President-elect Biden is sworn in. This process will only create more fissures in our country as we emerge from some of our darkest days.”
So far, only six House Republicans have signaled they intend to support the article of impeachment.
3.09pm EST15:09
It is now past 3 pm in Washington, but the House has not yet moved on to the final vote on the article of impeachment.
The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said yesterday that the final vote would occur at roughly 3 pm, but there are about 20 minutes of debate left.
Once the debate has concluded, the chamber will move on to voting on the article, which is expected to be approved.
2.54pm EST14:54
Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas who has criticized his colleagues’ efforts to cast baseless doubt upon the legitimacy of the presidential election, said he believed Donald Trump had committed “impeachable” offenses.
“The president of the United States deserves universal condemnation for what was clearly, in my opinion, impeachable conduct, pressuring the vice president to violate his oath to the constitution.” Roy said in his speech.
And yet Roy will not be supporting the article of impeachment. The congressman argued the article had been drafted in a manner that targeted political speech itself.
Here’s what the article says, in part: “Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States …
“Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office[.]” More
The US House of Representatives was poised on Wednesday officially to charge Donald Trump with inciting violence against the government of the United States one week after he rallied a mob of loyalists to storm the US Capitol, a historic measure that would make him the only American president to be impeached twice.The unprecedented effort gained momentum overnight as senior Republican leaders in the House joined Democrats in support of removing Trump from office.The single article of impeachment charges the defeated president with “inciting an insurrection” that led to what the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said would be immortalized as a “day of fire” on Capitol Hill.The president, Pelosi said, arguing in favor of invoking the constitution’s gravest remedy, represented a “clear and present danger to the nation we all love”.She was joined by six Republican members of the House, including Liz Cheney, the No 3 House Republican and daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president.Cheney said in a statement that there had “never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States” than Trump’s conduct on 6 January.The deadly assault on 6 January came as both the House and Senate were in session to certify Joe Biden’s victory in November’s presidential election, a result Trump refused to accept. Five people died during the siege, including a police officer.“We are debating this historic measure at an actual crime scene, and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the president of the United States,” said the congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat of Massachusetts and chair of the rules committee, opening Wednesday’s session.The emotionally charged debate took place against a constant reminder of the death and destruction that had transpired just one week ago. The building lawmakers call the People’s House, poorly defended last Wednesday, by this Wednesday had been turned into a fortress, protected by thousands of national guard troops and with metal detectors stationed outside the chamber doors. Some Republicans rebelled against the new safety protocols, evading the security check.A remorseless Trump on Tuesday called his inflammatory language at a rally immediately before the mob marched on the Capitol “totally appropriate”. Efforts to hold him accountable were nothing more than a “continuation of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of politics”, he said.Few Republicans were willing to defend Trump’s incendiary behavior. But those who opposed impeachment objected to the rushed nature of the proceedings and argued that there was little chance the president would be removed from office before the end of his term.“I can think of no action the House can take that is more likely to further divide the American people,” said Tom Cole, a Republican of Oklahoma, who was among the more than 120 House Republicans who voted last week to reject the electoral votes of key swing states that Biden won, despite officials at every level calling November’s vote the most secure election in US history.Democrats were incensed by calls for bipartisanship, particularly from Republicans who refused to recognize Biden’s election victory and voted to overturn the results of a democratic election even after the assault on the Capitol.“It’s a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren’t so mean to them,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Maryland congressman who will serve as the lead impeachment manager.The House proceeded with impeachment on Wednesday after Mike Pence formally rejected calls to strip Trump of power by invoking the 25th amendment to the US constitution, which allows for the removal of a sitting president deemed unfit to perform his job.Pence’s signal came just hours before the House passed a resolution calling on him to take the unprecedented action.Trump’s day of reckoning on Capitol Hill comes less than a year after he was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to open investigations into Biden and his son. But with just days left in his presidency, the political landscape had shifted dramatically.As fear turned to fury in the days since the siege, senior Republican leaders signaled both tacitly and explicitly a desire to purge the party of Trump. But their break with president came only after months of tolerating and indulging his campaign of lies about a stolen election, long after it was undeniably clear he had lost.No House Republicans voted in support when Trump was impeached in 2019 over his attempts to persuade the leader of Ukraine to investigate the family of Joe Biden, then his election rival.The swift second impeachment vote comes just one week after the riot in Washington DC – the first occupation of the US Capitol since British troops burned the building during the war of 1812 – and one week before Trump is due to leave office. The formal charge, a single article of impeachment, was drafted as lawmakers were ducking under chairs and praying for safety during the attack. It charges Trump with “inciting violence against the government of the United States’’ by encouraging his supporters to march on the Capitol in a last stand to keep him in office by overturning the will of 81 million Americans who voted against him.“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more,” he told the raucous crowd at last Wednesday morning’s gathering near the White House.Rallying behind what they believed was a battle cry from an American president, thousands of loyalists stormed the Capitol in a violent rampage that threatened the lives of lawmakers, congressional staff, journalists and Trump’s own vice-president, who was there to fulfill his constitutional duty to count and certify the electoral college votes.“In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government,” the article states. “He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of government.”Two Senate Republicans have already called on Trump to resign, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, reportedly believes the president committed impeachable offenses.The House was prepared to immediately transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate after Wednesday’s expected vote to impeach. On Wednesday, McConnell’s office said he would not reconvene the Senate before 19 January, meaning Trump’s impeachment trial would begin during the inaugural days of Biden’s presidency.Though consequences for Trump will not include premature removal from office, the Senate trial would not be entirely symbolic.Two-thirds of the 100-member body are required to convict a president, meaning 17 Republicans would have to join Democrats to find Trump guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.If convicted, it would then only require a simple majority to disqualify him from ever again holding public office. More
For Jamie Raskin, the Democratic congressman and constitutional law professor who is leading the push to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, the last fortnight has been tumultuous.He lost his son 25-year-old son, Tommy, who had struggled with depression, on New Year’s Eve.Seeing it as his duty, Raskin attended last week’s certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory in Congress with members of his family, from whom he was separated as a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol building.Despite these profound emotional shocks, Raskin has spent the last week drafting the article of impeachment against Trump over his role in inciting the storming of Congress, which is likely to be voted on by the House of Representatives later on Wednesday.The day before the storming of the Capitol, Raskin had buried his son, who died after leaving his family a note. “Please forgive me,” he had written. “My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.”As he stood to speak in the debate on the certification less than 24 hours later, Raskin – who had pinned a piece of black cloth to his lapel – received a standing ovation from fellow members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, who were aware of his recent loss and that he had still come to vote.Not long afterwards, the Trumpist mob broke in.Since then, Raskin has authored the House resolution that called on the vice-president, Mike Pence, to invoke the 25th amendment and declare Trump unable to complete his term, which expires next week. Pence ruled out doing that Tuesday night.The chamber quickly moved to the article of impeachment, which Raskin also helped draft. He has been clear about why he has needed to push through the difficult emotions he and his family have been confronting to hold Trump to account.“The president is a lethal danger to the American republic and the American people,” Raskin told the Atlantic magazine last week as he began drawing up the article of impeachment. “There has been nothing like this since the civil war.”And as Raskin told the Washington Post, he felt his son’s presence throughout the recent events. “I felt him in my heart and in my chest,” he said. “All the way through the counting of the electoral college votes and through the nightmare of the armed attack on the Capitol.”His son, a law student, as Raskin explained to the paper, had once asked him a question that had focused his mind.For a class about the first amendment issue of freedom of speech, Tommy Raskin had asked his father about “incitement to imminent lawless action”, and whether a government official who had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution should be held to a higher standard.“That ironically is going to be the critical issue for us talking about Donald Trump,” said Raskin. “Some people are saying: ‘Well, Donald Trump was just exercising his free speech.’ As president of the United States, he cannot be encouraging, counselling and inciting mobs that go and attack the Capitol of the United States.”Raskin is clear about what the US is confronting in the aftermath of the assault on Congress.“The president didn’t want to let go, and the fruit of his obsession with his big lie that he had actually won the election was this nightmarish assault on Congress,” Raskin said. “The president has become a clear and present danger to the republic.”“That is the groundwork for fascism, when you add racism, antisemitism, conspiracy theory and magical thinking. That is an absolute powder keg in terms of an assault on democracy,” Raskin said of the riot in an interview. “So we have to be very tough, and very strong right now in defending the constitution and democracy.”During the storming of Congress, Raskin’s thoughts were mostly on his 23-year-old daughter, Tabitha, and his son-in-law, who had accompanied him to the Capitol and were separated in the mayhem.When they were eventually reunited, Raskin assured his daughter that the next time she went to the Capitol, it would be calmer. “Dad, I don’t think there’s gonna be a next time,” she replied.Associated Press contributed to this reportIn the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or by emailing jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. More
