Trump Impeached for First Time by House of Representatives

The Articles of Impeachment

On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump on two articles. The first, abuse of power, charged Trump with soliciting the interference of a foreign government — Ukraine — in the 2020 presidential election by pressuring its president to publicly announce investigations into Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. The second, obstruction of Congress, charged Trump with directing the wholesale defiance of congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony related to the inquiry.

The Vote

The vote on the first article, abuse of power, was 230-197. The vote on the second article, obstruction of Congress, was 229-198. The votes fell almost entirely along party lines, though Democratic Representative Jared Golden of Maine voted for the first article but against the second, and Democrats Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota voted against both. No Republican voted in favor of either article. Trump became the third president in American history to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.

The Ukraine Pressure Campaign

At the heart of the impeachment was a July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who had served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. At the time, the Trump administration was withholding nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine, which was fighting a Russian-backed insurgency in its eastern regions. Witnesses testified that the aid and a coveted White House meeting were conditioned on Ukraine publicly announcing the investigations.

Trump’s Response

Trump denounced the impeachment as a “witch hunt” and an attempted “coup,” calling the process unfair and partisan. He claimed the call with Zelensky was “perfect” and that he had done nothing wrong. On the evening of the vote, Trump held a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he mocked the proceedings and attacked individual Democratic lawmakers. Speaker Pelosi, who had resisted impeachment for months, struck a solemn tone, telling members that the day was one that “nobody comes to Congress to look forward to.”

Historical Significance

The first impeachment of Donald Trump represented the culmination of years of tension between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats. Unlike the Clinton impeachment, which centered on personal misconduct, the Trump impeachment focused on the use of presidential power to advance personal political interests through foreign policy — a charge that many constitutional scholars described as precisely the kind of abuse the Founders had envisioned when they included the impeachment clause in the Constitution.