Pelosi to Trump: 'You are impeached forever' regardless of outcome of Senate trial

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said that Republican President Donald Trump is “impeached forever” regardless of the outcome of the Senate impeachment trial.

In an interview on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Saturday, addressing Trump, Pelosi said, “You are impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does, it can never be erased.”

“If I knew that the president is listening, I would want him to know that he is impeached forever, and he is impeached forever because he used the office of the president to try to influence a foreign country for his personal and political benefit. In doing so, he undermined our national security, he was disloyal to his oath of office to protect the Constitution and he placed in jeopardy the integrity of our election,” she added later. “He gave us no choice.”

The Democratic-led House of Representatives this week voted to send formal impeachment charges to the Senate, a move that launched the trial in the upper chamber.

Lawmakers voted 228 to 193 to give the Senate the task of putting Trump on trial on charges of abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine for personal political gain and of obstruction of Congress for blocking testimony and documents sought by Democratic lawmakers.

The vote was largely along party lines, but Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) was the only Democrat who voted against the impeachment articles, while Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.), who switched from Republican to Independent last year, voted in favor of the resolution.

The vote also approved a team of seven impeachment managers who will prosecute the case against Trump in the Senate.

“The fact is that we knew we had a solid case for impeachment of the president. The facts were clear, the Constitution required it, and we wanted to make our case and go forward, so we put forth the articles of impeachment and in fact voted them,” Pelosi said.

“We knew there was plenty of other, should we say, information to come forward, but it wasn’t necessary to impeach the president. It would have been further incriminating, but not necessary, and it wouldn’t in any way weaken the case that had the support of my caucus and was completely understood by the American people,” she added.

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A two-thirds majority vote would be needed in the Senate to remove the president from office. With Republicans in control of the upper chamber, Trump’s acquittal in a trial seems certain.

House Democrats launched the inquiry against Trump in September after an unknown whistleblower alleged the Republican president pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

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