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Trump becomes third US president impeached; Republican Senate tries

By a 230 to 197 vote in the Democratic-majority House, the 45th US president becomes just the third occupant of the White House to be impeached.(Pic AFP)

US President Donald Trump was impeached in a historic vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, setting up a Senate trial on removing him from office after three turbulent years.

By a 230 to 197 vote in the Democratic-majority House, the 45th US president becomes just the third occupant of the White House in American history to be impeached.

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, Democrat and former vice-president Joe Biden.

After a marathon 10-hour debate, lawmakers voted quickly 229-198 to approve 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.

Trump spent the first part of the day holed up at the White House, tweeting in frustration, but on Wednesday night the 73-year-old was on friendlier territory.

In an extraordinary split screen moment, as the House was casting votes to impeach him, thousands of Trump's most fervent supporters were cheering him at a rally in Michigan where he railed against a “radical left” he said was “consumed with hatred”.

Democrats are “trying to nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans”, he charged. “Four more years, four more years,” the crowd chanted back.

Despite testimony from 17 officials that Trump leveraged his office for political gain, the president maintained his innocence throughout the impeachment inquiry - denouncing it as a “witch hunt”, an “attempted coup” and an “assault on America”.

Neither of the two previous presidents impeached since 1789, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, was convicted in the Senate, and both held onto their jobs.

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.

“It is tragic that the president's reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“It is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections.”