US Senate Acquits Trump on Both Articles of Impeachment

US Senate Acquits Trump on Both Articles of Impeachment

United States President, Mr. Donald Trump, was last night cleared in his impeachment trial, ending a congressional bid to oust him from office that bitterly divided the US.

The Senate, run by the president’s fellow Republicans, voted to acquit him 52-48 on charges of abuse of power, and 53-47 on obstruction of Congress.

Democrats charged Trump in December with pressuring Ukraine to smear a potential White House rival.
In November, Trump will be the first impeached president to go for election.

In its historic vote on Wednesday, the Senate decided not to remove America’s 45th president from office on charges arising from his dealings with Ukraine.

If convicted on either charge, Trump would have had to turn over his office to Vice-President Mike Pence.
The Democratic-led House of Representatives approved the articles of impeachment on 18 December.

Trump, who is seeking a second four-year term in the November 3 election, had always denied wrongdoing.
His re-election campaign said in a statement: “President Trump has been totally vindicated and it’s now time to get back to the business of the American people.

“The do-nothing Democrats know they can’t beat him, so they had to impeach him.”

It said “this terrible ordeal” and “nonsense” was merely a Democratic campaign tactic.

The statement added: “This impeachment hoax will go down as the worst miscalculation in American political history.”
Trump, whose personal approval rating with American voters hit a personal best of 49% this week, according to Gallup – tweeted that he would speak on Thursday about the case.

Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican senator to cross the aisle and convict Trump, on the first charge of abuse of power.
Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said earlier on the Senate floor that the president was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.”

Despite Democratic hopes, two other moderate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, did not join Romney in voting to convict the president.
Some Republican senators criticised Trump’s behaviour in recent days, but said it did not rise to the level of impeachment.
Three centrist Democratic senators who Republicans had hoped would side with them instead voted to convict Trump.
They were Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama.

A two-thirds majority vote of 67 senators was needed to remove Trump, which was always going to be a long shot in a chamber controlled by his party.

The impeachment charges focused on Trump’s request that Kyiv announces a corruption investigation into Joe Biden, a Democratic White House candidate, and his son Hunter Biden.

Trump has argued that the younger Biden improperly held a board position with a Ukrainian natural gas firm while his father was US vice-president and in charge of American-Ukrainian relations.

Democrats accused Trump of abusing his power by withholding $391million (£300million) in security aid to prod Ukraine’s president into digging up dirt on the Bidens.

They also charged Trump with obstruction of Congress after the White House blocked testimony and documents sought by the House impeachment investigators.

Trump is the third US president to have been impeached.
The two others, Bill Clinton in 1999 and Andrew Johnson in 1868, were left in power by the Senate and did not seek re-election.
Trump has probably not heard the last of the Ukraine investigation.

Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday the chamber would “likely” issue a subpoena to Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton.

Senate Republicans ultimately declined to seek Bolton’s testimony during the president’s impeachment trial, provoking uproar from Democrats.

A manuscript of a forthcoming Bolton memoir reportedly alleges Trump told his former national security adviser to help him pressure Ukraine.

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