US President Donald Trump impeached by House of Representatives, to be tried by Senate before removal from office

For the third time in history, the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach a US President. It is true, Donald Trump on Thursday became the third President of the United States to be impeached, for abuse of power, by the lower house of the US Congress. However, like every other time, it is likely that it will not end up in him being removed from office. The Senate, the upper house, will now weigh in on the trial - and on account of it having a Republican-majority, Trump, in all probability, will be acquitted. However, this is still being seen as a historic win for the Democrats, who initiated the impeachment inquiry against Trump, and a blot in the US President's term, which might inflame partisan tensions in a deeply divided America.

The Democrat-led House of Representatives passed the abuse of power article of impeachment on a largely party-line 230-197 vote. The House then proceeded with a vote on the second article of impeachment charging him with obstruction of Congress. Following this, a trial will be held in the Republican-led Senate - a friendlier House for Trump - on whether to convict him and remove him from office. That would require a two-thirds majority in the 100-member Senate, meaning at least 20 Republicans would have to join Democrats in voting against Trump - and none have indicated they will. However, if the upper house, too, convicts him on the charges leveled against him, Donald Trump will be the first President of the United States of America to be removed from office by impeachment.

As the high-tension voting played out in the lower house of the Congress today, Trump was addressing a Christmas rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he blasted the "do-nothing" Democrats who, according to him, "have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame". Trump also likened the impeachment proceedings to a "political suicide march" and said he would prevail in the end. "Have you seen my polls?" the US President declared, as a supposed mark of adulation and to make a case for what he claimed to be a "witch hunt" against him. "After three years of sinister witch hunts, hoaxes, scams, the House Democrats are trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans," Donald Trump said. He also called out to Americans to vote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "the hell out of office."

A day earlier, ahead of the impeachment vote, Trump had also sent a six-page letter to Pelosi, angrily lashing out for what Trump saw as a Democrat-led "illegal, partisan-attempted coup" against him. Trump's rambling, grievance-laden letter to Pelosi alleged the Democrats of declaring an "open war" on American democracy and contained his litany of complaints against their efforts to remove him from office for pressing Ukraine to investigate political rival, Joe Biden.

Trump accused Pelosi of "turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution while scarcely concealing your (Pelosi's) hatred of me (Trump)." He also said that Pelosi was leading "libellous and vicious crusade" against Trump, "motivated by personal political calculation."

But, as things stand on Thursday, the Democratic-led House passed two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for his dealings with Ukraine. However, the process of impeachment does not necessarily result in removal from office, as it is only a legal statement indicting the criminal charges levelled against the government official in question, in this case, Trump. A second vote takes place in the upper house of the US Congress, the Senate, which will convict or not convict the individual. This is why the Senate vote will be important for the Democrats if they are to remove Donald Trump from his office through the impeachment process. However, the votes in the Senate are likely to fall in Trump's favour since the Republican party has a majority in the upper house.

Donald Trump has, on several accounts, said that the impeachment process has no legitimacy, but he is desperate to choke the process. No US President has ever been removed from office via the impeachment process set out in the US Constitution. His repeated lashing outs are the frequent demonstrations of this desperation, commentators have noted.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi had initiated the process of impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump after a whistleblower alleged that the US President may have withheld military aid to Ukraine as a means of pressurizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on two counts - firstly, to pursue investigations on Trump's political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and secondly, to float the conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind his 2016 Presidential campaign.