The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to kill an attempt to impeach President Trump on the grounds of bringing “ridicule, disgrace and disrepute” to the presidency.
The House voted 332 to 95 to table an impeachment article brought by Texas Democrat Al Green. Every Republican voted to table the motion, along with 137 Democrats.
Among the Democrats who voted to table the motion were 14 of the 85 Democrats who had previously called for an impeachment inquiry, CNN reported.
Green had introduced motions to impeach Trump before, but this marked the first time the bill up in the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives.
Green dismisses criticism from own party:
Ahead of the vote, Rep. Green dismissed calls from his own Democratic colleagues to hold off on bringing the impeachment resolution.
"I should not hold off, we should go forward as expeditiously as possible and we should do so because on yesterday we convicted the President, he said, referring to a vote to condemn Trump’s racist tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen. “The condemnation was a conviction. Today we have the opportunity to punish. As a result of what we did yesterday, the President suffers no harm, he doesn't have to pay any fine, he's not going to lose his job. But today we have the opportunity to punish."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the party should not move forward with impeachment unless the public is on their side. In June, more than 40 percent of Americans said Trump should be impeached and removed from office, according to a CNN poll.
"With all the respect in the world for him, 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," Pelosi said. "That is the serious path that we are on, not that Mr. Green is not serious, but we'll deal with that on the floor."
Trump claims his problems now ‘over’:
Trump gloated after the vote, writing that the resolution’s failure means that “impeachment of your president… is now OVER.”
"I just heard that the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly voted to kill the most ridiculous project I have ever been involved in. The resolution -- how stupid is that -- on impeachment," he said at a rally in North Carolina later on Wednesday.
"That was a slaughter, but many of those people that voted for us this afternoon in somewhat of a sneak attack ... I want to thank them because they did the right thing for our country," Trump said. "I want to thank those Democrats because many of them voted for us."
But Democrats say they still plan to move forward with numerous investigations, as well as testimony from special counsel Bob Mueller later this month.
"Our focus should be on making sure that the Mueller hearing goes well," said House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries.
