MOSCOW (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump was impeached for “far-fetched” reasons, calling the move by Democrats a continuation of their fight against the Republican leader.
“It’s simply a continuation of internal political struggle,” Putin said at his end-of-year news conference in Moscow. “The party that lost the (2016) election, the Democratic Party, is trying to achieve results by other means.”
He likened Trump’s impeachment to the earlier U.S. probe into collusion with Russia, which Putin played down as groundless. Former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded earlier this year that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion.”
“Now they invented some sort of pressure on Ukraine,” Putin said, referring to the investigation of Trump’s trying to enlist the president of that country to announce investigations of his political rival as he withheld U.S. aid to Kyiv.
Trump on Wednesday became only the third American president to be impeached. The historic vote in the House of Representatives split along party lines over a charge of abusing his power. The House also approved a second article that he obstructed Congress in its investigation.