US President Donald Trump faced becoming only the third US leader ever to be impeached yesterday when the US House of Representatives was set for a historic vote that would trigger his trial in the US Senate.
On the eve of the vote, Trump said that he was being subjected to an “attempted coup.”
In an extraordinarily angry six-page letter, the president told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that “history will judge you harshly.”
The letter came just minutes before she announced the House vote.
“The House of Representatives will exercise one of the most solemn powers granted to us by the Constitution as we vote to approve two articles of impeachment against the president of the United States,” Pelosi said in a letter to Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.
“During this very prayerful moment in our nation’s history, we must honor our oath to support and defend our Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she added.
Trump is accused of attempting to force Ukraine into investigating a main election rival, former US vice president Joe Biden.
He is also accused of obstructing the US Congress by refusing to cooperate with the impeachment investigation, barring staff from testifying and holding back documentary evidence.
The two articles of impeachment are certain to pass in the House, where Democrats hold a firm majority. That would send the case to the Senate, where a trial of Trump is expected to open next month, and his acquittal is equally expected, given the Republicans’ control there.
Even with that likely outcome, Trump poured out his frustration and fury in the letter to Pelosi.
The letter accused the veteran Democratic politician of “breaking your allegiance to the Constitution” and “declaring open war on American Democracy.”
It repeated his claim that the entire case against him is a “hoax” and a “colossal injustice,” and said that Democrats were being driven in impeachment “by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left.”
Pelosi dismissed the letter as “really sick.”
Yesterday’s debate was scheduled to last six hours, with a vote expected in the late afternoon or evening.
With the exception of just two, the 235 Democrat members in Congress appeared poised to stand united in voting through the formal impeachment charges.
While some members from relatively conservative districts face the possibility of being voted out of office next year for their stance, they stood together under Pelosi’s political wrangling.
“My military service taught me to put our country — not politics — first, and my time as a federal prosecutor taught me about the importance of the rule of law and of justice,” said US Representative Mikie Sherrill, a first-term Democrat from a Trump-leaning district in New Jersey.
At a hearing by the House Committee on Rules, which sets out the procedures for votes, the top two senators butted heads over what form the trial would take.
Democrats are insisting on calling White House officials as witnesses.
Democratic US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wants Trump’s chief of staff, former national security adviser and two others to testify.
However, Republican US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who can largely set the rules, rejected this and dismissed any idea that the trial was not a purely political exercise.
“I think we’re going to get almost an entirely partisan impeachment,” McConnell said.
“This is a political process. There is nothing judicial about it. I’m not impartial about this at all,” he said.
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