first impeachment of Donald Trump

The first impeachment of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, began on December 18, 2019, during the 116th United States Congress. The House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump was acquitted by the Senate on February 5, 2020. Trump's impeachment came after a formal House inquiry found that he had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid and then obstructed the inquiry itself by telling his administration officials to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony. The inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid and an invitation to the White House to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. A phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019 was particularly important according to Congressional testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a member of the National Security Council who listened to the call from the White House Situation Room. The inquiry stage of Trump's impeachment lasted from September to November 2019 in the wake of Vindman's August whistleblower complaint alleging Trump's abuse of power. In October, three congressional committees (Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs) deposed witnesses. In November, the House Intelligence Committee held a number of public hearings in which witnesses testified publicly; on December 3, the committee voted 13–9 along party lines to adopt a final report. The total number of witnesses testifying either publicly or in closed door sessions was 17. A set of impeachment hearings before the House Judiciary Committee began on December 4; on December 13, it voted 23–17 along party lines to recommend two articles of impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The committee released a lengthy report on the impeachment articles on December 16. Two days later, the full House approved both articles in a mostly party-line vote, with all Republicans opposing, along with three Democrats. This made Trump the third U.S. president in history to be impeached and marked the first fully partisan impeachment where a U.S.