Democracy 21 Strongly Applauds House Members Who Cast Historic Votes Today To Impeach President Trump

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Democracy 21 Strongly Applauds House Members Who Cast Historic Votes Today To Impeach President Trump

Statement of Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer

Democracy 21 strongly applauds the House Members who cast historic votes today to impeach President Trump, holding him accountable for gross abuses of his presidential powers and for violating his oath of office.

Today’s vote represents only the third time in American history that a President of the United States has been impeached. (President Nixon would have been a fourth if hadn’t resigned from office.) The previously impeached Presidents were not removed from office by the Senate and neither will President Trump be. That does not detract, however, from the gravity of the determination by the House today to impeach Trump and hold him accountable for his actions.

President Trump engaged in a frontal attack on our democracy and on the integrity of our elections in his actions involving Ukraine.

Trump held hostage military assistance to Ukraine and a White House meeting in an effort to make Ukraine President Zelensky “pay” Trump for those important benefits by announcing a corruption investigation of Trump’s potential opponent in the 2000 presidential general election, former Vice President Joe Biden.

President Trump’s actions could not be allowed to stand unchallenged. Failure by the House to hold President Trump accountable would have established his blatantly wrongful conduct in the Ukraine scandal as precedent for acceptable future conduct by Trump and future Presidents.

Trump’s campaign to obtain a corruption investigation of his political opponent, Joe Biden, by a foreign country involved:

  • Gross abuse of his powers by attempting to extort Ukraine to conduct a corruption investigation against a political opponent for Trump’s personal political benefit;
  • Gross abuse of his powers by misusing taxpayer money appropriated by Congress for Ukraine for his own personal political benefit;
  • Illegally soliciting a foreign country to intervene in U.S. elections by violating the statutory ban on any person soliciting “a thing of value” from a foreign country in connection with any U.S election; and
  • Endangering our national security and the national security of our ally, Ukraine, by withholding for his own personal political benefit military funds appropriated by Congress for Ukraine.

President Trump violated a cardinal principle of our democracy and of our constitutional system of government. Our political system permits only Americans to participate in and decide our elections. We prohibit foreign countries and foreign interests from playing any role in our elections. President Trump, however, directly solicited a foreign country to intervene in the 2020 presidential election in order to benefit his personal political interests.

Trump attempted to rig the 2020 presidential election for his benefit.

President Trump engaged in irresponsible, indefensible, un-American, unpatriotic actions that the House responded to today by passing two Articles of Impeachment.

The House has affirmed to the nation and the world that President Trump is unfit to serve as President.

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