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, DPA/NAN reported.
Trump who was earlier impeached, became the third leader to earn the infamous record but the man who was on a campaign in Michigan waived it off as a non-event.
Trump told the crowd in Battle Creek, Michigan: “by the way, it doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached. The country is doing better than ever before. We did nothing wrong. And we have tremendous support in the Republican Party.”
The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday, December 18, 2019, to impeach Trump for abuse of power, the first of two charges against him: that he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf.
The House approved the first article by a vote of 230 to 197 at 8:34 p.m. after a daylong debate. Of the 233 Democrats, 228 voted in favour, along with the House’s one Independent. Two Democrats opposed the measure. No Republicans voted in favour.
The two Democrats who were black legs were Reps. Jeff Van Drew, of New Jersey, and Collin Peterson, of Minnesota. They voted along with all the members of the Republican minority.
The Democratic majority was joined by Rep. Justin Amash, of Michigan, a former Republican who turned independent.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had laid out the Democratic case: “The president violated the Constitution. It is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections: the basis of our democracy.”
Pelosi said that Trump “used the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal, political benefit at the expense of America’s national security.”
The only other two presidents to be impeached in American history were Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1998. Both survived their Senate trials and served out their terms. The House began impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon in 1973, but Nixon resigned before he was impeached.
Even though Trump appeared unfazed by his impeachment by the House, his White House slammed the action as a shameful historical episode.
In another reaction, Trump said, “every single Republican voted for us”.
“So we had 198, 229, 198. We didn’t lose one Republican vote”. “The Republican Party has never been so affronted, but they have never been so united as they are right now”, Trump said.
