The Republican-led Senate acquitted President Trump of the abuse of power charge stemming from his efforts to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations that would benefit him in this year’s election, in the first of two votes at the end of a four-month impeachment process.
All 47 Senate Democrats and one Republican voted to convict the president of abuse of power, falling short of the 67 needed for a conviction in only the third presidential-impeachment trial in history. The Senate will next vote on the second article of impeachment, on obstruction of Congress.
The impeachment trial grew out of a July 25 phone call in which Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s president to announce certain investigations just as he was holding up U.S. aid to the country. Mr. Trump has defended the call as “perfect” and has said he did nothing wrong regarding Ukraine. The aid was later released after bipartisan outcry from lawmakers.
“The American people, and frankly, people all over the world, know it’s a hoax,” he told supporters at a recent rally in Des Moines, Iowa.
Mr. Trump had hoped for vindication in the Senate trial after a House investigation that he had decried as politically motivated. What he got was something less: Amid strong support for his acquittal from his own party, several Republicans also said Democrats had proved that he acted improperly regarding Ukraine.
Mr. Trump was also denied a unanimous verdict from Republican senators. Two hours before the acquittal vote, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said in a floor speech that he would vote to convict Mr. Trump on abuse of power.
“The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust,” Mr. Romney said.
The action by Mr. Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, made him the first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president of his own party. In the impeachment trials of Democratic presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, no Democratic senators voted to convict.
The White House, which as late as Wednesday morning had been predicting that all Republican senators would vote to acquit the president, was caught off-guard by Mr. Romney’s announcement, aides said. The White House abruptly closed to the media a planned event at which Mr. Trump had been expected to make remarks.
Nonetheless, the Senate vote to acquit among Republicans marked a clear victory for the president, underscoring his primacy in the GOP and among the party’s voters and the end to a process that had hung over his presidency as he seeks re-election in November. Mr. Trump has sent nearly 700 tweets or retweets about impeachment, an average of more than five per day.
Democrats said the acquittal amounted to a defeat for both their party and the institution of Congress, and they warned that leaving Mr. Trump in office would make him free to abuse power again.
“He has compromised our elections and he will do so again,“ said Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led the team of impeachment managers. “You will not change him. You cannot constrain him.”
Wall Street Journal