The US House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against US President Donald Trump, making him the third US president to be impeached. A trial to determine Trump’s innocence or guilt of the accusations, which include abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, will be held in the Republican-controlled US Senate.
The House voted Wednesday evening 230 to 197 on the abuse of power impeachment article, according to a process laid out by the US Constitution. A subsequent vote on the second article came in at 229 to 198.
The votes followed six hours of debate and fell largely along party lines, and Trump’s trial in the Senate is predicted to do much the same.
The decision marks the culmination of months of inquiry and intrigue sparked by an anonymous, CIA-connected whistleblower from the White House whose report to Congress was hushed up by Trump in August. The report concerned a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump pressed for Kiev to open an investigation of former US Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
The elder Biden, now a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination to run against Trump in 2020, has boasted of his 2016 actions as vice president to force Kiev’s then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, from office just as Shokin was beginning his own investigation into the gas company Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden sat on Burisma’s board at the time, and so the move has been interpreted as the elder Biden shielding his son from a corruption probe. However, Hunter was never specifically targeted by Shokin.
