The House just voted down articles of impeachment for President Trump
- A Democratic congressman forced a vote on an impeachment resolution for President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
- The House voted to table the resolution, with many Democrats joining Republicans to not pursue impeachment.
- The final vote tally provided an eye-opening account of who is on board with impeachment, which is considerably larger than the last time Rep. Al Green of Texas forced a similar vote in January 2018, while Democrats were still in the minority.
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WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives scrapped an impeachment resolution for President Donald Trump on Wednesday after a rogue congressman forced a vote for the first time since Democrats took back the majority and as calls for impeachment have grown in recent months.
Democrats joined Republicans in tabling the articles of impeachment, which Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas forced lawmakers to vote on through a privileged resolution.
The final vote tally was 332-95-1 to scrap the resolution.
While most Democrats voted to table the resolution, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler voted against scrapping the impeachment plan. A spokesperson for Nadler told INSIDER the resolution "should have been referred to the Judiciary Committee" instead.
Green's decision to force a vote on impeachment is the first of its kind in the Democratic-controlled House. Green had previously forced a similar vote in January 2018, which overwhelmingly failed to advance. Each time, Green's reasons for impeachment did not stem from actual crimes, but offensive rhetoric and behavior from Trump.
Prior to the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Green's resolution would be dealt with on the floor, reiterating her calls to allow the various committees to complete their investigations before any impeachment efforts are undertaken.
"But as I have said over and over again, with all due respect to Mr. Green, he's a very prayerful person and he cares very much about our constitution," she said. "We have six committees that are working on following the facts in terms of any abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and the rest that the president may have engaged in."
"That is a serious path that we are on. Not that Mr. Green is not serious, but we'll deal with that on the floor," Pelosi added.
While Democratic leaders were not on board with Green's stunt, but the vote provides a unique snapshot of where many lawmakers stand on the issue of impeachment. Republicans are uniform in their opposition, but a significant number of Democrats are looking to kick start the effort to aggressively censure the president through impeachment.
Green characterized his push for impeachment as a necessary punishment for Trump's repeated "bigotry."
"We have to punish the president & impeachment is the means by which he can be punished," Green said during a Wednesday morning appearance on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. "We ought to impeach this president for his bigotry."
The vote came just several hours after a spat between Republicans and Democrats erupted on the House floor. Republicans objected to Pelosi's description of a string of tweets aimed at several women of color serving in the House as "racist."
What followed were a series of back and forth arguments that included Republicans attempting to use House rules to restrict Pelosi's speech on the floor. At one point, Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri became so frustrated with the partisan squabbling, he dropped his gavel and abandoned his position presiding over the House floor.
The impeachment vote comes just one week before former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is slated to testify before multiple committees about the findings of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
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