In a vote of 232-197, the House of Representatives this afternoon voted to impeach President Donald Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection,” related to the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol building as a Joint Session of Congress was meeting to debate election certification. This is the second time in his four-year term that Trump has been impeached on trumped-up charges, the first time at the end of 2019, when he was charged with “abuse of power” for phoning Ukrainian President Volodymyir Zelensky and allegedly pressuring him to help investigate the Burisma company for which Joe Biden’s son Hunter worked.
In the midst of very tight security—there was a heavy National Guard deployment inside the Capitol, and streets in the area were closed, with a large police presence—the House debated Resolution 24 proposed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including one article of impeachment accusing Trump of “willful incitement for insurrection” and saying he “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government.” The article charges that Trump “willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—lawless action at the Capitol.” Other charges claim that prior to the Jan. 6 Joint Session of Congress, President Trump “repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the presidential election results were fraudulent and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by state or federal officials.” Therefore, the resolution states, his statements about fraud made near the White House “encouraged and foreseeably resulted in lawless action at the Capitol.” Notably, the last item in House Res 24 states that with this impeachment, Trump will be disqualified from holding any U.S. office. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/24/text
