Here's How Long Island Lawmakers Voted On Impeaching Trump

LONG ISLAND, NY — Long Island's congressional delegation was divided along party lines on Wednesday's House of Representatives vote to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump and charge him with abusing his office and obstructing Congress.

The nation's 45th president became just the third person in the office to be impeached. He now faces trial in the Senate and the unlikely possibility of being removed from office for "high crimes and misdemeanors."

On Long Island, Republican Reps. Lee Zeldin and Pete King voted against impeachment, while Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi, Kathleen Rice and Gregory Meeks voted in favor of it.

Read more: A Nation Divided: House Impeaches President Donald J. Trump

New York overall has 27 members of Congress, including 21 Democrats and 5 Republicans. One seat remains vacant after Republican Rep. Chris Collins resigned in October.

Last week, a bitterly divided House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment accusing Trump of abusing the power of his office and obstructing Congress. However, given the Senate is controlled by Republicans, it's considered highly unlikely.

Impeachment is not a conviction, rather the rough equivalent of a grand jury issuing indictments. Senators act as judge and jury.

Here's how Long Island lawmakers voted on both articles of impeachment, as well as what they said after:

Republican Lee Zeldin, 1st District

Zeldin voted against impeachment and said his chamber "disgraced itself" by voting to impeach Trump, whom Zeldin believes did not commit any crime.

"Each and every member of Congress was elected to fight for the American people and the real issues that face our country, not turn the very serious process of impeachment into a political tool to take down a President of the opposite party without grounds," Zeldin wrote in a Facebook post. "This entire impeachment has been a sham and a permanent, dark stain on the House of Representatives. History will not look kindly upon my Democratic colleagues and neither will the American people next Election Day."

Republican Pete King, 2nd District

King joined Zeldin in voting against impeachment and was disappointed it passed. King noted he voted against impeaching President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and did so again because neither article could cite a single law the president broke.

While meeting with fellow GOP lawmakers, King recalled the mood Wednesday as "an interesting dichotomy of anger at the injustice of the entire [impeachment] effort [and] quiet satisfaction that the Democrats were hurting themselves badly as more and more Americans were seeing through their charade."

King also described the vote as a rush to judgment to satisfy the Democrats' progressive base and set up the looming presidential primary elections.

Democrat Tom Suozzi, 3rd District

Suozzi voted in favor of impeachment, saying the president threatened to withhold Congressionally-approved military aid to an ally under attack by Russia unless the ally, a foreign government, agreed to help the Trump campaign.

"That is an abuse of power," Suozzi said. "The President refused to cooperate with Congress's constitutional duty to provide oversight. That is obstruction."

Suozzi added that inaction would only enable Trump and set a dangerous precedent for future presidents that their misdeeds are immune from consequences.

"As difficult as this is for our country, I believe this is the right thing to do for our country," he said.

Democrat Kathleen Rice, 4th District

Rice also voted to impeach Trump. In a statement following the vote, Rice said she "took no pleasure" in casting the votes, but believed they were necessary to hold Trump accountable for his actions.

After reviewing both articles of impeachment and the underlying evidence, Rice said it was clear that Trump committed impeachable acts that threatened the nation's security and undermined its democracy.

"Earlier this year, the President deliberately withheld congressionally-appropriated military aid to a critical American ally at war with Russia," she said. "And through the testimony of various fact witnesses, we learned that he did so not as a matter of U.S. foreign policy or because it was in the best interest of our national security, but to extract a personal and political favor that would benefit his reelection campaign. This was a gross abuse of power. And when a whistleblower reported his actions, the President and his associates engaged in an unprecedented effort to derail a legitimate investigation by the House of Representatives, a co-equal branch of government. That is clearly obstruction of Congress."

Democrat Gregory Meeks, 5th District

Meeks voted in favor of impeachment, saying that witness testimony and "overwhelming" evidence led him to conclude the president abused the power of his office for his own personal gain rather than the public interest.

"We did not free ourselves from a King to turn the President into a monarch," Meeks wrote, referencing the obstruction charge. "In the case of our current President, he has shown his disdain for separation of powers unrelentingly and unrepentantly. This pattern of behavior evidenced throughout the Mueller investigation and repeated itself again as the President has continually defied any oversight initiatives from the legislature. This is in complete contravention of our Constitutional system. And it is an impeachable offense."