Rep. Adam Schiff said that Democrats ‘have been compelled by the circumstances to move forward’, after the House voted almost entirely along party lines to approve rules for the next stage of the impeachment inquiry against President Trump
WASHINGTON - A deeply divided U.S. House of Representatives took a major step in the effort to impeach President Donald Trump on Thursday when lawmakers approved rules for the next, more public, stage in the Democratic-led inquiry into Trump’s attempt to have Ukraine investigate a domestic political rival.
“It’s a sad day. No one comes to Congress to impeach a president,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said before the vote. Trump told a UK radio station the Democrats knew they were losing next year’s vote and so were trying to take him down.“The Democrats are desperate, they’re desperate. They have nothing,” Trump told LBC Radio in an interview. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham denounced the process as “unfair, unconstitutional and fundamentally un-American.”
Thursday’s vote was the first formal test of support for the impeachment probe and showed that Democrats have enough backing in the House to later bring formal charges, known as articles of impeachment, against Trump if they feel they have enough evidence.“It should not be Nancy Pelosi and a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who is going to be our president,” said Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican.
If the House eventually votes to impeach Trump, that would set up a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump would not be removed from office unless votes to convict him by a two-thirds margin, something that looks unlikely as congressional Republicans have been reluctant to move against the president.
The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William Taylor, said Trump held back nearly $400 million in security aid in an attempt to get Zelenskiy to publicly declare that he would carry out the investigations that the U.S. president sought — a “quid pro quo” confirmed by Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
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