President Donald Trump was acquitted on Wednesday in his U.S. Senate impeachment trial, saved by fellow Republicans who rallied to protect him nine months before he asks voters in a deeply divided America to give him a second White House term.
The businessman-turned-politician, 73, survived only the
third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history – just like the two other
impeached presidents – in his turbulent presidency’s darkest chapter. Trump now
plunges into an election season that promises to further polarize the country.
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Trump was acquitted largely along party lines on two
articles of impeachment approved by the Democratic-led House of Representatives
on Dec. 18. The votes to convict Trump fell far short of the two-thirds
majority required in the 100-seat Senate to remove him from office under the
U.S. Constitution.
The Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of abuse of power
stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden, a
contender for the Democratic nomination to face him in the Nov. 3 election.
Republican Senator Mitt Romney joined the Democrats in voting to convict. No
Democrat voted to acquit.
The Senate then voted 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of
Congress by blocking witnesses and documents sought by the House. Romney joined
the rest of the Republican senators in voting to acquit on the obstruction
charge. No Democrat voted to acquit.
On each of the two charges, the senators stood at their
desks on the Senate floor to vote one by one, with U.S. Chief Justice John
Roberts presiding.
On Twitter after the vote, the president posted a video
showing Trump campaign signs for future elections from 2024 onward ending with
“Trump 4EVA.” The U.S. Constitution limits a president to two elected four-year
terms in office.
Trump said he would deliver a public statement at noon (1700
GMT) on Thursday “to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!”
“President Trump has been totally vindicated and it’s now
time to get back to the business of the American people,” Trump’s campaign
manager, Brad Parscale, said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans
engineered a stripped-down trial with no witnesses or new evidence. Democrats
called the trial a sham and a cover-up. Trump called the impeachment an
attempted coup and a Democratic attempt to annul his 2016 election victory.
The acquittal handed Trump his biggest victory yet over his
Democratic adversaries in Congress. Democrats vowed to press ahead with
investigations – they are fighting in court for access to his financial records
– and voiced hope that the facts unearthed during the impeachment process about
his conduct would help persuade voters to make him a one-term president.
Trump’s job approval ratings have remained fairly consistent
throughout his presidency and the impeachment process as his core conservative
supporters – especially white men, rural Americans, evangelical Christians and
conservative Catholics – stick with him.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted on Monday and
Tuesday, showed 42% of American adults approved of his performance, while 54%
disapproved. That was nearly the same as when the House launched its
impeachment inquiry in September, when his approval stood at 43% and
disapproval at 53%.
Trump faces no serious challengers for his party’s
presidential nomination. He is poised to claim the nomination at the party’s
convention in August and previewed in his State of the Union address on Tuesday
campaign themes such as American renewal, economic vitality and hardline
immigration policies.
‘APPALLING ABUSE’
Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, broke with
his party to vote to convict Trump on the abuse-of-power charge. Romney called
the president’s actions in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden “grievously
wrong” and said Trump was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.”
“What he did was not ‘perfect,’” Romney said on the Senate
floor, as Trump has described his call with Ukraine’s president that was at the
heart of the scandal. “No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights,
our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to
keep one’s self in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation
of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.”
Romney, a moderate and elder statesman in his party, became
the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a member of his own party
at an impeachment trial.
McConnell, speaking to reporters after the vote, accused
Democrats of using the impeachment trial to try to gain an advantage in winning
control of the Senate in November, but called the effort “a colossal political
mistake.” He also said he was “surprised and disappointed” by Romney’s vote.
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said Trump’s
acquittal in an unfair trial was worth nothing.
“No doubt, the president will boast he received total
exoneration. But we know better. We know this wasn’t a trial by any stretch of
the definition.”
Democrats expressed concern that an acquittal would
encourage a president who already challenges political norms. They have painted
him as threat to U.S. democracy and a demagogue who has acted lawlessly and
exhibited a contempt for the powers of Congress and other institutions. They
also have voiced concern over Russia interfering in another American election.
Trump’s legal team offered a vision of nearly unlimited
presidential powers, a view Democrats said placed any president above the law.
The trial formally began on Jan. 16. The Senate voted 51-49
last Friday to defeat the Democrats’ bid to call witnesses such as Trump’s
former national security adviser John Bolton, with only two Republicans joining
them.
In the previous presidential impeachment trials, Andrew
Johnson was acquitted in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War and
Bill Clinton was acquitted in 1999 of charges stemming from a sex scandal.
SHADOW OF INVESTIGATION
Trump, now seeking a second four-year term, has been under
the shadow of some sort of investigation for most of his presidency. The
acquittal marked the second time in 10 months that he withstood an existential
threat to his presidency.
In March 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found
insufficient evidence that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia
in its interference on his behalf in the 2016 election. Mueller did not
exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice in seeking to impede the investigation
but stopped short of concluding the president acted unlawfully.
Last July 25, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy during a phone call to “do us a favor” and open an investigation into
Biden and his son Hunter Biden and into a discredited theory beneficial to
Russia that Ukraine colluded with Democrats to meddle in the 2016 election to
harm Trump.
Hunter Biden had joined the board of Ukrainian energy
company Burisma while his father was U.S. vice president. Trump accused the
Bidens of corruption without offering substantiation. The Bidens denied
wrongdoing.
Democrats said Trump further abused his power by withholding $391 million in security aid approved by Congress to help Ukraine battle Russia-backed separatists and by dangling a coveted White House meeting as leverage to pressure Zelenskiy to announce the investigations.
(Reuters)