The U.S. House of Representatives have impeached President Donald Trump for alleged abuse of power and impediment of Congress. With this, Trump has become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999.
Trump, a Republican President, has denied the charges approved on December 13th by the Judicial Committee of the House, which is controlled by the opposition Democratic Party.
The impeachment in the US context means indictment, not removal, and it is undertaken by the lower legislative chamber.
A President can only be removed from office on conviction by the Senate, acting on the impeachment, for `treason, bribery or other acts of gross misconduct. The struggle will now move to the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to impeach the President, something that has never happened in the country.
In same vein, the White House has hit back at lawmakers after President Donald Trump was impeached, slamming the illegitimate articles of impeachment and voicing confidence that the president would be acquitted in the Senate.
The White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said, in a statement, that the Democrats have chosen to proceed on this partisan basis in spite of the fact that the President did absolutely nothing wrong, calling the votes in the House of Representatives an “unconstitutional travesty”.
