The House rejected Rep. Al Green’s motion to bring articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump this afternoon, with most Democrats denying the measure a formal vote alongside ruling-party Republicans.
Members voted to table the motion on a vote of 346-58 as they were forced to put their positions on the record for the first time.
House Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer said they would not support the motion in a statement before the vote that declared their party ‘firmly focused on taking real, effective steps’ to help Americans and defeat Republicans’ ‘cruel barrage of attacks on the middle class.’
They said the Department of Justice’s special counsel investigation into the president and his associates must play out first before they’d entertain the idea.
‘Now is not the time to consider articles of impeachment,’ the joint statement read.
The House rejected Rep. Al Green’s motion to bring articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump this afternoon, with most Democrats denying the measure a formal vote alongside ruling-party Republicans
Members voted to table the motion on a vote of 346-58 as they were forced to put their positions on the record for the first time
Green’s motion earned the support of four in 10 Democrats in the lower chamber, despite the Pelosi and Hoyer’s forewarning.
Reps. John Lewis, Frederica Wilson, James Clyburn, and Keith Ellison, the vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, were among the high-profile members of Green’s party who endorsed a motion to proceed to a formal discussion.
The White House labeled them all ‘extremists in Congress’ and tied the effort to Democratic lawmakers’ threats to shutdown the government in a dispute over illegal immigration.
Introducing the motion on the floor today – as Trump was reveling in his announcement that the U.S. would move it’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem – Green said that Trump had ‘harmed’ society and ‘brought shame and dishonor to the office of President.’
‘In his capacity as president of the United States, unmindful of the high duties of his high office, and the dignity and proprieties thereof and of the harmony and courtesies necessary for stability within the society of the United States, Donald John Trump has with his statements done …more than insult individuals and groups of Americans,’ he said.
‘He has harmed the society of the United States, brought shame and dishonor to the office of President of the United States, sowing discord among the people of the United States by associating the majesty and dignity of the presidency with causes rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, or neo-Nazism.’
Green announced the move yesterday and told C-SPAN during an appearance this morning on Washington Journal: ‘This president is unfit. He has committed high misdemeanors. Andrew Johnson was impeached for less, and articles of impeachment will be brought against him today.’
The lower chamber was set to take up the measure just after 1 pm, at the zenith of Trump’s legacy-defining Israel speech.
Republican lawmakers were easily thwart the effort with the help of most House Democrats.
A larger number of Democrats voted with Green than were expected, considering that only four aside from Green went part of an effort to impeach Trump last month.
Congressmen Steve Cohen, Luis Gutierrez and Adriano Espaillat and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge joined Green in introducing five articles of impeachment against Trump in mid-November.
Gutierrez did not vote on the measure today. He was at a DREAM Act protest this afternoon, where he was says he was arrested.
Of those that did, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said: ”It’s disappointing that extremists in Congress still refuse to accept the President’s decisive victory in last year’s election.
‘Their time would be better spent focusing on tax relief for American families and businesses, and working to fund our troops and veterans through the holiday season rather than threaten a government shutdown.’
Green had said Tuesday from the House floor that he would formally present the articles for a vote this afternoon.
He used a ‘privileged’ motion to get around Republicans’ iron-fisted control of the House docket.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Paul Ryan declined to comment.
A ‘dear colleague’ letter that Green distributed accused Trump of inciting ‘hatred and hostility’ and using his position to further attitudes that have ‘sown discord within American society.’
Green argued in the release that Trump need not have been found to have committed any actual crimes to be impeached for high misdemeanors.
Johnson was impeached solely for bringing ‘contempt, ridicule and disgrace’ to the office, he said, and for verbal harassment that was generally determined to be unbecoming of the nation’s highest representative.
‘This president is unfit. He has committed high misdemeanors,’ Green said Wednesday of Trump
Green said Wednesday on C-SPAN that Trump’s harmful rhetoric is enough to impeach him.
He has called neo-Nazis protesting in Charlottesville ‘very fine people’ and referred to Rep. Frederica Wilson, a black Democratic member, as ‘wacky’ during the Gold Star widow phone call dispute. He also said that professional football players who kneel during the national anthem are SOBs, Green said.
‘The b is a dog. He called the mothers of these professional athletes dogs. That’s unacceptable,’ Green stated.
Trump’s retweets last week of an anti-Muslim fringe group that’s based in Britain was also ‘unacceptable,’ Green said on C-SPAN.
‘He will tolerate the KKK to a greater extent than he will Islam. That’s all unacceptable.’
Green assessed that he would now be called ‘uncivil’ for assaulting Trump in this manner, which he said is hypocritical against the backdrop of the president’s own uncouth remarks.
‘My friends, like it or not, we have we have elected a bigot as president,’ he said.
In his letter, Green said of Trump: ‘Although he may not be the first bigot in the White House, he is the first who routinely uses Twitter and other public statements to feed an alt-right hate machine, antithetical to the constitutionally protected interests of many minorities, women, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community.’
The Texas Democrat, who was seen cordially interacting with the president during Trump’s visit to the state in September in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, says he does not want to impeach the president, but he believes it is the correct action to take.
‘History will be my final judge, and vindication my eternal reward,’ he stated at the end of his dear colleague letter.
He said Wednesday on C-SPAN, ‘When you’re doing the right thing, you have a good deal of comfort in knowing that you may not be judged properly by the people who are your contemporaries but those who look through the vista of time, they will judge your properly.’
Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House, has firmly opposed the movement to impeach Trump, despite her disagreements with the Republican president.
She told CNN last month, ‘It’s not someplace that I think we should go.
‘I don’t want to dampen anybody’s enthusiasm for what they believe, because a lot of people in our country think that the president should be impeached,’ she said. ‘But that… isn’t what our election is about.’
Pelosi encouraged her caucus to focus on ‘meeting the needs of the American people, stopping this tax bill right now, which is an insult to the intelligence of the American people, an assault on their financial security.
‘That’s what we should be talking about,’ she said.
Responding on Wednesday, Green said that Trump has ‘brought shame and dishonor on the presidency.
‘So I have no quarrels with what other people will say. I have great respect for them, but it’s not about them,’ he stated.