Sara Clifft
Editor
The United States House of Representative voted to impeach President Donald Trump on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. This is the first time in American history that a president has been impeached twice.
The impeachment followed the violent riot and storming of the United States Capitol on January 6. On the morning of January 6, at a "Save America" rally, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and several members of Congress incited a crowd of Trump supporters.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol...and fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said.
The attack on the 117th Congress resulted in the evacuation of the Senate and House chambers and five deaths.
The events were widely condemned by political leaders and organizations in the United States and internationally. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the storming of the Capitol a "failed insurrection" and affirmed that Trump's claims of election fraud were false. Several social media and technology companies, like Twitter and Facebook, suspended or banned Trump's accounts from their platforms and many business organizations cut ties with him.
The storming of the Capitol has been described as treason, insurrection, sedition, domestic terrorism, assault and an attempt by Trump to carry out a self-coup.
As a result, the House voted 232 to 197 to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” However, McConnell is not planning to bring the Senate back for a trial before January 19, meaning the trial will not begin until Trump is out of office and Biden has been sworn in.
Photo courtesy USA TODAY
Of the 231 House members that voted in favor of impeachment, ten were Republican.
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