President Donald Trump has been impeached, but whether he’ll be removed from office is up to the Republican-controlled Senate. Two articles of impeachment against Trump will soon go to the Senate for an official impeachment trial that will decide his fate.
It all started with a whistleblower complaint filed by a US intelligence official in August that alleged Trump had abused his power to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals on a July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — and that the White House tried to conceal it. That kicked off the House Democrats’ inquiry.
To prove his innocence, Trump authorized “the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader. The White House then released a readout of the call (not a verbatim transcript, as the president claims).
The readout clearly shows that Trump tried to pressure the new president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family ahead of the 2020 election — in exchange for a coveted White House meeting with Trump and perhaps even continued US military assistance to the country.
Trump has admitted to discussing Biden with Ukraine, but he maintains that the July phone conversation was “a very friendly and totally appropriate call” and that he did nothing wrong.
However, the growing scandal, including the revelation that Trump withheld millions in military aid to Ukraine ahead of his call with Zelensky, galvanized Democratic lawmakers to impeach.
Read our guide to impeachment for the process, politics, and key players at the heart of the scandal so far, and follow Vox for updates on the story:
Hunter Biden, the black sheep who got Trump impeached, explained
Hunter Biden, then the chair of the World Food Program USA, speaking at a 2016 event in Washington, DC. Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USAHunter is the younger of Joe Biden’s two sons. He never showed as much promise as his brother Beau, stumbling through life and often trading on his dad’s name and position for financial gain. He’s more or less operated in the background as something of a black sheep in the family, but he emerged at the forefront of American politics in 2019 over work he did in Ukraine that fueled a bogus conspiracy theory at the heart of Trump’s decision to strong-arm the country’s president.
It’s not unusual for the children of successful politicians to trade on their family’s famous name and connections to get ahead in life. And when that happens, most political parents hope for a trajectory like the one enjoyed by Beau Biden until his life was cut short by cancer in 2015.
Read Article >Trump just fired Gordon Sondland as EU ambassador
Gordon Sondland, the now-ousted US ambassador to the European Union, is sworn in before testifying before the House Intelligence Committee at the Longworth House Office Building on Wednesday, November 20, 2019, in Washington, DC. Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump is continuing his retribution campaign against administration officials who testified in the impeachment inquiry, this time firing his handpicked ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland.
The dismissal, which came just hours after he pushed out Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother from the National Security Council, makes it clear that the president feels few restraints after the Senate acquitted him earlier this week.
Read Article >Alexander Vindman, a key impeachment witness, is dismissed from the White House
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, director of European affairs at the National Security Council, testifies on Capitol Hill on November 19, 2019. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images“Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth,” Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified in November, during the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine.
But now that the Senate has delivered the president “total acquittal” on two articles of impeachment, a triumphant Trump is apparently seeking vengeance. And Vindman appears to be his first target.
Read Article >Threats, misogyny, hypocrisy — Trump’s post-impeachment speech had a little of everything
Trump and Ivanka Trump embrace during the president’s speech on Wednesday. Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe post-impeachment victory lap speech President Donald Trump delivered on Thursday from the White House has to be one of the most bonkers official events in presidential history.
Speaking off the cuff, Trump began remarks by falsely claiming that the investigations into him predated his presidency, called the Russia investigation “bullshit,” and mocked a Purple Heart recipient who testified during the impeachment trial. He also complained Hillary Clinton was never prosecuted and referred to former leaders of the FBI as “scum.”
Read Article >With impeachment, America’s epistemic crisis has arrived
The ultimate spin-machine challenge. Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesThis piece was originally published in November 2019. Since then, the Democratic House impeached the president and the Republican Senate voted to acquit him, in a “trial” with no witnesses or new evidence. Public opinion remains divided along the exact same lines it was divided before the whole thing started.
Back in 2017, I wrote a piece speculating that the Mueller hearings might bring America’s epistemic crisis to a head. That crisis involves Americans’ growing inability, not just to cooperate, but even to learn and know the same things, to have a shared understanding of reality. We have sorted ourselves into polarized factions living in different worlds, not just of values, but of facts. Communication between them is increasingly difficult.
Read Article >Read Trump’s bananas, post-impeachment victory lap speech
President Donald Trump holds up a newspaper at the White House on February 6, 2020, one day after the Senate acquitted him on two articles of impeachment. Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump was always going to take a victory lap following his triumphant State of the Union and his acquittal in the Senate.
But his White House speech on Thursday — billed as a public statement to “discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!” — was, well, who even knows.
Read Article >Trump strikes a bitterly vindictive tone during National Prayer Breakfast speech
Trump arrived at the National Prayer Breakfast waving around newspapers. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday in Washington, DC — an annual tradition for presidents — made clear he blames Democrats and even Republican Mitt Romney for the impeachment process that ended with him being acquitted by Republican senators the day before.
Trump, who waved around a newspaper with the headline “ACQUITTED” when he arrived at the event, spoke immediately after Washington Post columnist Arthur Brooks. The contrast between Trump and Brooks was stark: Brooks addressed traditional Christian themes during his remarks, urging attendees to “love your enemies” and transcend “contempt.” Trump, however, began his speech by saying, “Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you.”
Read Article >“Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy
Steve Bannon in Rome, Italy, on March 25, 2019. In an earlier interview with the journalist Michael Lewis, Bannon said, “The Democrats don’t matter, The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis/Getty ImagesOn Wednesday, the Senate voted to acquit President Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
Despite all the incontrovertible facts at the center of this story, it was always inevitable that this process would change very few minds. No matter how clear a case the Democrats made, it was always highly likely that no single version of the truth was ever going to be accepted.
Read Article >The Senate’s decision to acquit Trump is even less democratic than you think
House impeachment managers Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofgren, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia walk to the Senate chamber on February 5, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty ImagesOn the surface, President Donald Trump can claim popular vindication after Wednesday’s impeachment vote. Senators voted 52-48 to acquit him on charges that he abused power, and 53-47 to acquit him on obstruction of Congress charges.
The reality, though, is that the only reason a majority of the Senate voted to keep Trump in office is that the body is configured in a way that systemically advantages Republicans. The blue state of California has 68 times as many people as the red state of Wyoming, for example, but both states still receive two senators.
Read Article >Trump immediately refuted the Republican idea he was chastened by impeachment
Trump at the White House on Wednesday. Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesMinutes after the Senate vote to acquit him on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump posted a tweet undercutting the belief a number of Republican senators expressed in recent days that getting impeached might prompt him to tone it down a little.
Trump posted a video with an edited animation of a Time magazine cover teasing that he, or at the very least someone with the same last name, will be running for president in 2020, 2024, 2028, and beyond. It ends with Trump standing being an election placard reading, “TRUMP 4EVA.”
Read Article >Trump was never going to be forced out
President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally inside of the Knapp Center arena at Drake University on January 30, 2020, in Des Moines, Iowa. Tom Brenner/Getty ImagesJuly 2017 seems like a million years ago now, but in some ways it feels like little has changed. Take this article I wrote that month. The headline is “The latest revelation won’t end Trump’s presidency. Only Paul Ryan can.” The first section is subtitled “Robert Mueller can’t fell Donald Trump.”
The only part of that which feels dated — and the main mistake I see in my analysis, in retrospect — is the name “Paul Ryan.” It was never up to Paul Ryan, after all. His successor, Nancy Pelosi, did impeach Trump for holding aid to Ukraine hostage in hopes of damaging a political rival.
Read Article >Trump’s impeachment acquittal shows how democracy could really die
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during impeachment proceedings against President Trump, on February 5, 2020. Senate Television via Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s impeachment acquittal is a warning sign that something has gone deeply wrong in our political system. It shows a kind of subtle corruption of the law that has, in other countries, led to the decline and fall of their democratic systems in their entirety.
Senate Republicans didn’t violate the Constitution’s rules for holding an impeachment trial. They adhered fairly reasonably to the letter of the law and can credibly claim they did all that was legally required of them. But this was a sham trial, one whose outcome was never seriously in doubt. By following the formal rules, Senate Republicans gave this fiction a veneer of formal legitimacy. All of them, with the brave exception of Mitt Romney, weaponized the letter of the law against its spirit.
Read Article >Mitt Romney is the only Republican who voted for Trump’s conviction
Sen. Mitt Romney attends the State of the Union address on February 4, 2020. Patrick Semansky/APRepublican Sen. Mitt Romney just voted to convict the president on one article of impeachment: abuse of power.
The Utah senator stands in stark contrast to every other person in the 53-member Republican conference, who all voted to acquit President Trump on both articles. Romney was also one of just two Republicans to vote in favor of considering more witnesses for the trial last week, alongside Sen. Susan Collins. He voted in line with his party on the second article, obstruction of Congress.
Read Article >3 winners and 3 losers from the impeachment and acquittal of Donald Trump
President Trump campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa, on on January 30, 2020. Tom Brenner/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump is the clear winner of the now-resolved Senate impeachment battle — the question is at what cost.
He was acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial, and he even got his way on persuading the Senate to eschew any witnesses, defying Democratic requests and the overwhelming preference of public opinion.
Read Article >It’s official: The Senate just acquitted President Trump of both articles of impeachment
President Trump arrives at campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 14, 2020. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty ImagesThe Senate just voted to acquit President Donald Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — ending a more than four-month impeachment process that began after revelations that Trump had withheld aid from Ukraine and pressured its leader to investigate Hunter Biden.
The acquittal is the third time in US history the Senate has acquitted a president who has previously been impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Clinton in 1999.
Read Article >Mitt Romney just did something that literally no senator has ever done before
Sen. Mitt Romney speaks to the media as he arrives during the impeachment trial of President Trump in Washington, DC, on January 29, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty ImagesSen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee, just became the sole exception to the Senate’s party-line vote to acquit President Trump — and the first senator who has ever voted to remove a president of his own party.
Romney says he broke party lines to vote to convict on one of two charges, abuse of power, because he believes Trump’s conduct shows that the president is unfit and that he “should be removed from office.”
Read Article >Why Trump’s acquittal will damage US foreign policy
President Trump after delivering the State of the Union address on February 4, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial won’t just serve as an indictment of the American political system, it will also deal a body blow to US foreign policy efforts to curb global corruption and promote the rule of the law.
For decades, a fixture of American diplomacy has been to get other nations to follow America’s example. There’s a top-level official at the State Department and multiple bureaus there that work on these very issues.
Read Article >How to watch the Senate vote on Trump’s impeachment this afternoon
This afternoon — and for the third time in history — the US Senate will vote on acquitting or convicting a president of multiple articles of impeachment. The outcome is one that’s essentially been expected since the trial started just over two weeks ago: President Donald Trump will be acquitted.
Given Republicans’ 53-person majority in the Senate, the votes are going to fall far short of the 67 needed to convict and remove the president from office.
Read Article >Susan Collins’s rationale for acquitting Trump aged poorly before she could cast her vote
Collins at the State of the Union on Tuesday. Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe rationale Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) gave for voting for acquit President Donald Trump aged poorly before she even had a chance to officially cast it.
Following a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday in which she announced she’ll vote to acquit, Collins told Norah O’Donnell of CBS that she believes Trump “has learned from this case” and “will be much more cautious in the future.”
Read Article >Neither Susan Collins nor Lisa Murkowski will be voting to convict Trump
Sen. Susan Collins walks past reporters during the impeachment trial of President Trump on January 31, 2020. Julio Cortez/APLess that one day out from the final vote in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, we now know that almost every Republican is expected to acquit him.
It’s an outcome that’s long been a foregone conclusion, though House Democrats had hoped to sway at least one Republican to vote in favor of conviction on the two articles. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced this week that they would both be voting for acquittal, leaving Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) as the lone swing Republican who hasn’t announced which way he’ll go. Romney and Collins, previously, were the only two Republicans who voted to call more witnesses for the impeachment trial.
Read Article >“He is not who you are”: Adam Schiff makes last-ditch plea to Senate Republicans
House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks to reporters in the Senate basement at the US Capitol as the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continues on January 30, 2020, in Washington, DC. Zach Gibson/Getty ImagesHouse impeachment manager Adam Schiff is looking for just one Republican.
Schiff on Monday made an emotional plea to Republican senators during the closing arguments of the impeachment trial, calling on them to defy their party and vote to convict President Donald Trump.
Read Article >Joni Ernst walked back her call for Joe Biden to be impeached if elected
Vice President Joe Biden congratulates Sen. Joni Ernst and her family, daughter Libby Ernst (left) and husband Gail Ernst, during a ceremonial swearing-in in the Old Senate Chamber at the US Capitol on January 6, 2015, in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesSen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who once called for impeaching former President Barack Obama over his decision to make recess appointments, is now claiming that it’s Democrats who’ve actually “lowered the bar” for impeachment.
On Saturday, Ernst said that former Vice President and 2020 contender Joe Biden “should be very careful” with his words around President Donald Trump’s impeachment. “We can have a situation where if it should ever be President Biden, that immediately, people, the day after he would be elected would be saying, ‘Well, we’re going to impeach him,’” she said.
Read Article >Trump’s closing impeachment argument involved misrepresenting a tweet from the whistleblower’s lawyer
Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow arrives at the Capitol on February 3, 2020. Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesJay Sekulow’s closing argument against convicting President Donald Trump on Monday centered on how Democrats purportedly had it out for Trump since the beginning. But as has been the case with much of Trump’s impeachment trial defense, a key part of Sekulow’s argument involved misleading people.
Sekulow tried to make a big deal out of a January 30, 2017 tweet posted by Mark Zaid, an attorney representing the whistleblower who first sounded the alarm about Trump’s Ukraine dealings, in which he wrote that a “#coup has started” and added, “#impeachment will follow ultimately.” The point Sekulow was trying to make is that Trump’s opponents were planning to topple him ever since he took office, and that the Ukraine scandal was just a pretext for trying to make it happen.
Read Article >What to expect from the final week of the impeachment trial
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) walks near the Senate chamber in the Capitol on February 3, 2020. Alex Edelman/Getty ImagesNow that the Senate has blocked the consideration of witnesses, President Donald Trump’s acquittal is all but guaranteed. He’ll still need to wait a few days, though.
A Senate vote on the two articles of impeachment won’t take place until 4 pm Wednesday afternoon, after Trump has already given the State of the Union address on Tuesday. That’s according to a resolution the Senate passed Friday night, which lays out the schedule for the next few days:
Read Article >Donald Trump will be acquitted. American politics will be convicted.
Supporters of President Donald Trump held a “Stop Impeachment” rally in front of the Capitol on October 17, 2019. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty ImagesVox’s Ezra Klein also discusses the implications of President Donald Trump’s likely acquittal on the most-recent episode of the podcast Impeachment, Explained. You can listen to it here.
Senate Republicans are preparing to acquit President Donald Trump — and convict the American political system.
Read Article >
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