His eventually obituary, that is how we wrap up our wednesday night broadcast. Thank you so very much for being here with us. Good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. It is wednesday, the 18th Of December in the year 2019 and President Donald Trump is impeached. The vote in the House Of Representatives tonight to impeach the president was not close. It was 230 to 197 on the first article, which was abuse of power. One democrat voted present. On the second article, Obstruction Of Congress, it was a vote of 229198, again, with one vote present. These were not slim margins. The successful vote to impeach the president tonight, of course, does not remove him from office. The decision of whether or not to remove him from office will now be made in the United States senate, where hell be put on trial in a proceeding overseen
by the Chief Justice of the United States supreme court. Were talking about that as if it is a forgone conclusion, as if thats the next obvious thing
democrats who would vote no? no. i knew about a couple of days ago i knew we would have a very, very small number of democrats. and one of them as you know is becoming a republican, jeff van drews, so i don t really count him in our count. but i think the reason for that is we really did focus quite significantly on the ukraine issue. we took our time i mean in spite of what the republicans said, we ve had eight months. had we not gone through the mueller investigation and seen exactly what happened with obstruction of congress during the mueller investigation, and the day after mueller comes and testifies as adam schiff has said before you see trump calling zelensky, placing that call to president zelensky and asking, coercing this investigation into his political opponent, i think had that all not happened we wouldn t be where we are. and many of those front liners have said that to me and said it
detriment of the national security interests of the united states. that is the very definition of an impeachable offense. when congress began to investigate president trump s wrongdoing, he engaged in an unprecedented pattern of obstruction. that, too, is why the impeachment power exists. a president who subverts both our elections and our constitutional system of checks and balances puts himself above the law, and it is congress duty to hold the president, any president accountable. it gives us no pleasure no pleasure to stand here today, but president trump s conduct has put our next election at risk. president trump s behavior puts the integrity of our constitutional order at risk. and president trump s continued actions put the rule of law at risk. the framers gave us the power of impeachment for exactly this reason. and in fulfillment of our oath and obligation to the american people, today, we took action to hold president trump accountable
it s really very vague about what a senate trial should be except for the fact there should be one and the chief justice should be there presiding. okay, and on that point of how the senate is going to conduct this, we also just saw unfold in that press conference right after the vote tonight, michael, where the speaker and the intelligence committee chairman and the judiciary committee chairman are taking questions from reporters. and what arises quickly is the revelation there s actually no commitment yet from the house, from the speaker that she is going to deliver those articles of impeachment to the senate so they can use them as the basis of the senate trial to potentially remove president trump from office. a long back and forth in which she would not talk about when that is going to happen. then she was pressed to commit that it eventually would happen, she said, she s not raising that prospect that she won t deliver the articles to the senate. that was raised by reporters. s
president trump was impeached tonight on two articles. the first was abuse of power. the vote there was 230-197. article two was obstruction of congress. the vote to impeach was one more and one less in each direction. 229-198. only a couple of democrats peeled off from what was otherwise a party line vote in the house. i will also show you, we just got in what we believe is going to be the washington post front page tomorrow. very simply, trump impeached. president is third in u.s. history to face senate trial. down the right-hand column you ll see a very interesting headline in terms of what s about to happen next and the way