# Trump First Impeachment The third presidential impeachment in U.S. history (after [[Andrew Johnson]] 1868 and [[Bill Clinton]] 1998) and the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Triggered by the [[Donald Trump - do us a favor though]] in which Trump conditioned the release of $391 million in congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine on a public Ukrainian announcement of investigations into [[Joe Biden]] and the [[CrowdStrike Conspiracy Theory]] — the debunked, Kremlin-friendly claim that Ukraine rather than Russia hacked the DNC in 2016. ## Timeline **July 18, 2019** — Trump orders a hold on $391M in security assistance to Ukraine. The hold is concealed from Congress. **July 25, 2019** — Trump's call with Ukrainian President [[Volodymyr Zelensky]]. Trump asks Zelensky to "do us a favor though" — to investigate Biden and CrowdStrike (see [[CrowdStrike Conspiracy Theory]]). See [[Donald Trump - do us a favor though]]. **August 12, 2019** — An intelligence community whistleblower files a formal complaint with the [[Inspector General]] of the [[Intelligence Community Hub]]. The complaint alleges that Trump used "the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." **September 9, 2019** — IG [[Michael Atkinson]] notifies the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that he has received a credible whistleblower complaint of "urgent concern" — and that Acting DNI [[Joseph Maguire]] is withholding it from Congress, contrary to statute. **September 13, 2019** — [[Adam Schiff]], chair of the [[House Intelligence Committee]], issues a subpoena to Maguire for the complaint and for ODNI's correspondence with [[The White House]], with an accompanying letter stating that the committee "can only conclude" that the misconduct at issue involves the president or senior White House officials. The subpoena sets a September 17 deadline, failing which Maguire is directed to appear at an open hearing. This is the first public act of the impeachment sequence — eleven days before Pelosi's announcement, and the point at which the withheld complaint became a live fight between a committee and an acting officeholder. **September 24, 2019** — House Speaker [[Nancy Pelosi]] announces a formal impeachment inquiry. [[The White House]] releases its memorandum of the July 25 call the next day. **September 26, 2019** — The whistleblower complaint is released publicly. **October–November 2019** — House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence holds closed and then public hearings. Witnesses include Lt. Col. [[Alexander Vindman]] (NSC Ukraine specialist who was on the July 25 call), Ambassador William Taylor (acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine), [[Fiona Hill]] (former NSC Russia adviser), [[Marie Yovanovitch]] (recalled U.S. ambassador to Ukraine), [[Gordon Sondland]] (EU ambassador), and others. Testimony establishes a parallel back-channel run by [[Rudy Giuliani]] and confirms the quid-pro-quo conditioning of military aid on the announced investigations. **December 4, 2019** — The [[House Judiciary Committee]] takes testimony from four constitutional-law scholars on the grounds for impeachment: [[Pamela Karlan]] (Stanford), Noah Feldman (Harvard) and Michael Gerhardt (North Carolina), called by the majority, and Jonathan Turley (George Washington), called by the minority. Karlan's argument was that Article II confers no general power to act as the president wishes; the line that circulated instead was an aside about the president's son, for which she apologized the same day. **December 13, 2019** — [[House Judiciary Committee]] approves two articles of impeachment along party lines. **December 18, 2019** — Full U.S. House of Representatives votes to impeach Trump: - **Article I (Abuse of Power)**: 230–197 - **Article II (Obstruction of Congress)**: 229–198 - No Republican votes for either article. Two Democrats (Collin Peterson, Jeff Van Drew) vote against Article I; three (Peterson, Van Drew, Jared Golden) vote against Article II. [[Tulsi Gabbard]] (then a Democrat) votes "present" on both. **January 15, 2020** — House passes Resolution 798, naming the impeachment managers and transmitting the articles to the Senate. Lead manager: [[Adam Schiff]] (Chair, House Intelligence). Other managers: Jerry Nadler, [[Zoe Lofgren]], [[Hakeem Jeffries]], Val Demings, Jason Crow, Sylvia Garcia. **January 16, 2020** — Senate trial commences. Chief Justice John Roberts presides. Senate Majority Leader [[Mitch McConnell]] sets trial procedures over Democratic objections that they preempt witness testimony. **January 22–24, 2020** — House managers present prosecution case. **January 25–28, 2020** — Trump's defense team (Pat Cipollone, Jay Sekulow, [[Alan Dershowitz]], Ken Starr, others) presents defense case. Dershowitz argues that any presidential action taken in pursuit of re-election cannot be impeachable if the president believes his re-election is in the national interest — a doctrine the [[Donald Trump - find 11780 votes]] would test eleven months later. **January 31, 2020** — Senate votes 51–49 against calling witnesses. Republican Sens. [[Mitt Romney]] and [[Susan Collins]] join Democrats. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) provides the deciding vote against witnesses. **February 5, 2020** — Senate votes to acquit: - **Article I (Abuse of Power)**: 52 not guilty, 48 guilty. Sen. [[Mitt Romney]] (R-UT) votes guilty — the first U.S. senator in history to vote to convict a president of his own party. - **Article II (Obstruction of Congress)**: 53 not guilty, 47 guilty. No Republican defections. - Two-thirds (67 votes) needed to convict; not reached. ## Why this matters **1. The first impeachment to test the modern post-Watergate norms.** Clinton's 1998 impeachment was over conduct (perjury about a personal affair) most viewed as private. Trump's first was over conduct (extortion of a foreign ally for personal political benefit) directly within the impeachment framers' "high crimes and misdemeanors" understanding — abuse of office for foreign-aided self-dealing. The acquittal demonstrated that, in a polarized Senate, even textbook examples of the framers' impeachable conduct could not produce conviction without near-unanimous evidentiary clarity *and* significant cross-party defection. **2. Established the pattern Trump would carry forward.** Acquittal validated, for Trump and his coalition, that the political costs of using official power against domestic and foreign actors for personal benefit were manageable. The Raffensperger call would come eleven months later. The fake-electors scheme would come weeks after that. The structural lesson Trump took from the first impeachment was not "stop"; it was "this works." **3. Romney's solitary defection.** Romney's vote on Article I — guilty — was unique in U.S. history. He explained it as a vote of conscience after concluding the evidence was overwhelming. The vote produced a year of political fallout for Romney within the GOP and was a precursor to the [[Stop the Steal]]-era loyalty cleavages: the ideological conservatives who broke with Trump on factual or constitutional grounds (Romney, [[Liz Cheney]], [[Brad Raffensperger]], [[Adam Kinzinger]]) became the principal targets of Trump's intra-party purge. **4. The procedural precedents.** The Senate's refusal to call witnesses (51–49) was unprecedented in U.S. impeachment trials — every prior trial had included witness testimony. McConnell's procedural management set the template for the second impeachment trial's similar structure: minimize evidence, accelerate to acquittal vote. **5. The whistleblower's identity and the precedent for retaliation.** The whistleblower's identity was protected by statute. Trump and allies — including journalists at right-wing outlets — repeatedly named a person they alleged was the whistleblower and demanded the person testify. This established a precedent of attempted retaliation against whistleblowers that has continued through both Trump terms. ## Aftermath Within weeks of the acquittal, Trump removed Lt. Col. Vindman from his NSC post (Vindman was escorted from the White House grounds), removed Vindman's brother (an NSC ethics lawyer) on the same day, and recalled Ambassador Sondland from his EU post. IC Inspector General [[Michael Atkinson]] — who had notified Congress of the whistleblower complaint as required by law — was fired on April 3, 2020. The retaliation pattern was explicit and uncontested. The military aid to Ukraine was eventually released in September 2019 after the hold became politically untenable. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years later (February 2022) would put the operational consequences of Trump's 2019 hold into sharper relief. See [[Trump Impeachments Timeline]] for the broader narrative connecting this impeachment to the [[Trump Second Impeachment]] (Jan 6) and the political through-line to Trump's 2024 victory and second term. ## Related - [[Donald Trump - do us a favor though]] — the conduct at the heart of Article I - [[Trump Second Impeachment]] — the second impeachment, sixteen months later - [[Trump Impeachments Timeline]] — the meta-pattern aggregator - [[Russia]] — the broader Russia/Ukraine thread - [[Donald Trump - find 11780 votes]] — same operational pattern, eleven months later