The United States House of Representatives has impeached President Donald Trump over allegations of abuse of power.
According to AFP, 230 representatives voted for the impeachment of the 45th President of the United States.
A Senate trial would follow as the final lap of the impeachment process.
It is unlikely that the Senate would impeach Trump as the Republican party has majority in the upper house.
Democrats said they had “no choice” but to formally charge the Republican President, whose impeachment along stark party lines places an indelible stain on his record while driving a spike ever deeper into the US political divide.
“What is at risk here is the very idea of America,” said Adam Schiff, the lawmaker who headed the impeachment inquiry, ahead of the vote.
Trump will now stand trial in the Senate, where his Republicans hold a solid majority and are expected to exonerate him.
The House vote came four months after a whistleblower blew open the scandal of Trump pressuring Ukraine’s President to investigate his potential White House challenger in 2020, the veteran Democrat Joe Biden.
After a marathon of 10 hours of debate, lawmakers were to vote quickly on the second article of impeachment facing Trump — for obstructing the congressional probe into his Ukraine dealings by blocking the testimony of subpoenaed White House aides.
Despite testimony from 17 officials that Trump leveraged his office for domestic politic gain, the President maintained his innocence throughout the impeachment inquiry — furiously denouncing it as a “witch hunt,” an “attempted coup” and on Wednesday as an “assault on America.”
But despite the high likelihood of Trump being cleared by Senate Republicans, Democrats said the evidence against him was overwhelming and forced them to act, according to the AFP.
“It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice,” said House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
