The House of Representatives on Wednesday voted to impeach President Donald Trump for the second time of his presidency.
The impeachment resolution, which charged the president with “incitement of insurrection,” said the president had incited supporters at a Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. “Members of the crowd he had addressed … unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the vice president, and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts,” the resolution noted.
The measure passed by a vote of 232-197, with 10 Republicans joining 222 House Democrats voting in favor. Four Republicans — Dan Crenshaw (TX), Chip Roy (TX), Nancy Mace (SC), and John Curtis (UT) — abstained.
The measure drew slightly more support than the 2019 effort to impeach Trump, when 229 members voted to impeach him on the charge that he had obstructed a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and 230 members voted to impeach him on a charge that he had abused his power.
Trump is the third president in history to be impeached by the House, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, and the first to be impeached twice. The Senate voted in favor of acquittal each time.
It isn’t clear Democrats have enough votes to succeed in their latest attempt to impeach the president. The party will hold 50 of the Senate’s 100 seats
As of Wednesday, four Republican senators had said Trump’s actions warranted his removal from office, though none had committed to voting for the specific resolution passed by the House. Those included Mitt Romney (UT), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Pat Toomey (PA), and Ben Sasse (NE).
Complicating the issue is the fact that the Senate will not consider the matter until Trump has left office. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) indicated this week that while he is still making a decision about whether to support the president’s impeachment, he would not call the Senate back to Washington before Jan. 19, just a day before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration as Trump’s successor. That means the Senate will not take the issue up before 1 p.m. on Jan. 20 — just an hour after Biden is scheduled to become president.