Which ten House Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump on January 13, 2021, and what were their reasons?
Executive summary
Ten House Republicans crossed party lines on January 13, 2021, to join Democrats in impeaching President Donald Trump on a single article—incitement of insurrection—after the January 6 Capitol breach, citing his role in encouraging the attack and betraying his oath; those members were Liz Cheney, Anthony Gonzalez, Jaime Herrera Beutler, John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer, Tom Rice, Fred Upton, Dan Newhouse, and David Valadao [1] [2] [3]. Their public rationales ranged from legalistic fact reviews and duty to the Constitution to moral condemnations of the president’s rhetoric, and the decision carried immediate political consequences inside the GOP as many faced retirements, primary defeats, or censure [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. The ten who voted and the formal charge
The House adopted a single article charging “incitement of insurrection,” and the bipartisan tally included exactly ten Republicans: Cheney (WY), Gonzalez (OH), Herrera Beutler (WA), Katko (NY), Kinzinger (IL), Meijer (MI), Rice (SC), Upton (MI), Newhouse (WA), and Valadao (CA), a list reported across contemporary roll calls and post-vote summaries [1] [3] [2].
2. Shared legal and constitutional arguments
Several of the Republicans framed their votes as legal and constitutional necessities: Rep. John Katko, a former federal prosecutor, said he reviewed “the facts at hand” and concluded Trump “encouraged this insurrection” via speech and social media, signaling a fact-based pathway to impeachment rather than partisan impulse [3]. The House managers’ article cited Trump’s speech and online statements as the core evidence for incitement [1].
3. Moral, oath-based rationales and public statements
Others couched their decisions in moral terms. Peter Meijer said the president “betrayed his oath of office” by seeking to undermine the constitutional electoral count and bore responsibility for the violence [4]. Jaime Herrera Beutler explicitly rejected fear as her motive—“truth sets us free from fear”—framing the vote as an ethical obligation beyond partisan loyalty [4].
4. Individual political contexts shaped choices
The ten Republicans came from varied districts—swing seats and safe GOP turf—which informed both their calculus and subsequent fates; some cited district duty and the need to defend democratic norms, while political vulnerability or independence played a role in who crossed the aisle [3]. Post-vote consequences were swift: by late 2025 eight of the ten had left Congress through retirements, primary losses, or defeats, leaving only Newhouse and Valadao among sitting Republicans who had voted to impeach [2] [6] [5].
5. Alternative GOP view and constitutional counterarguments
Republicans who opposed impeachment argued procedurally and politically that impeaching a president days before a term ended—especially a president no longer in office at the time of a Senate trial—raised constitutional questions; the Senate debated that very issue, with some GOP senators asserting the trial’s constitutionality while others resisted, reflecting intra-party disagreement about process as well as substance [7]. This constitutional pushback and later GOP organizing to oust or discipline defectors underscored competing motives inside the party [8].
6. Consequences, motives, and the broader political story
The ten Republicans’ votes were explained publicly as judgments that Trump’s rhetoric directly contributed to violence and that safeguarding the electoral process trumped party unity; opponents characterized the move as partisan or premature, and the vote catalyzed intra-party purges and election-time retribution by Trump-aligned forces—an outcome chronicled in subsequent coverage of retirements and primary challenges [8] [5] [2]. Reporting documents the vote, the stated rationales from individual members, and the political fallout, but contemporaneous sources differ on emphasis—some stress constitutional-duty language while others center moral or factual condemnations [3] [4] [1].
Sources and limits: reporting from Ballotpedia, Roll Call, The Guardian, People, Bloomberg, AP, Fox News, and others catalog the vote, list the 10 Republicans, quote many of their statements about oath and facts, and trace the political aftermath; where a lawmaker’s private motive beyond public statements is not documented in these sources, this account does not speculate beyond the cited record [1] [3] [4] [2] [5] [8] [9].