Washington: The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the second historic impeachment motion against incumbent President Donald Trump after debate on the Congress Building in Washington on inciting the recent violence on Capitol Hill. Donald Trump has become the first President of the United States to face impeachment twice in the same term in the history of American democracy. The motion for impeachment passed by 232 votes in the House of Representatives by 197, in which ten MPs of the Repubkin Party also voted in support of impeachment.
“Today, in a bipartisan way, the House demonstrated that no one is above the law – not even the President of the United States,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she signed the article of impeachment after the vote.
The measure, Pelosi said, also makes clear “that Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our country”.
Ten Republicans joined 222 Democrats in voting to impeach Trump, making the vote a bipartisan rebuke of the president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The riot at the Capitol on January 6 left five people dead and sent shockwaves across the US and the world, spurring Democratic Party legislators to launch an impeachment push against Trump in his final days in the White House.
The Capitol was stormed after Trump delivered an inflammatory speech to a crowd of his supporters that had gathered in protest against Congress’ certification of US President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory.
The impeachment article states that in the months before January 6, Trump repeated false claims of widespread election fraud and said the results should not be accepted.
He also “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged – and foreseeably resulted in – lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country any more,’” the article states.
Trump did not immediately comment on his impeachment.
But in a video posted on the White House Twitter account on Wednesday evening, he condemned the attack on the Capitol and said there was no excuse for violence.
“I want to be very clear, I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement,” Trump said.
The president had remained defiant on Tuesday, rejecting Democrats’ impeachment effort as dangerous and “a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt in the history of our country”.
